Big Heart Machine: Big Heart Machine
Outside In Records

Talk about serendipity. As an Arlington Heights high school student dreaming of being a composer, Brian Krock idolized Darcy James Argue, whose Secret Society outfit has helped redefined the big band for the modern era. Wouldn't you know it, shortly after moving to New York City the then-twenty-year-old Krock met Argue, on a subway train no less, and after confessing his admiration for his elder's music boldly asked if he'd produce the recording that would become the eponymous debut of Krock's eighteen-piece band; to his credit, Argue obviously complied.

Krock was well-equipped for the challenge, having acquired his Master's Degree in Composition at the Manhattan School of Music. Balancing out that formal training is a long-standing love for heavy metal and prog bands such as Megadeth, Pantera, Rush, and Yes (Krock even once fronted a power metal band called Lorna Sue), so if there's a reason why heavy moments surface on Big Heart Machine, the explanation, at least in part, is easily explained. That said, the album's no one-dimensional re-casting of metal in big band terms; multiple other elements work their way into the material, among them the writing of Messiaen, Ligeti, and Cage. With such disparate influences in play, one key challenge for Krock involved integrating them in a way that felt natural.

Interestingly, while he composed and arranged the material, he doesn't conduct the group, that role handled by Miho Hazama, who otherwise leads the ensemble m_unit. Krock instead plays alto sax, clarinet, piccolo, flute, and soprano recorder alongside a murderer's row of Brooklyn-based compadres, the band boasting five woodwind players, eight horns, a pianist, guitarist, bassist, vibraphonist, and drummer. As modern a take on the big band as Big Heart Machine is, Krock hews to the Ellington tradition of assembling players with strong individual voices and writing to their strengths, and in keeping with that tradition, individual players' names are indicated to clarify who's featured on a specific track. To the leader's credit, solo spots are handled in such a way that every member, it seems, gets time in the spotlight.

The Cage-inspired opener “Don't Analyze” wends down unexpected, improv-inflected paths, a trajectory perhaps attributable to Krock's adherence to one of his forebear's ‘Rules for Students and Teachers': “Don't try to create and analyze at the same time. They're different processes.” However much Krock might be following in Ellington et al.'s footsteps, no big band has likely ever featured a loping groove-and-trippy synthesizer sequence like the one presented here. If a direct tie to that earlier tradition is audible, it's in the leader's smooth alto playing, which ultimately serves as a nucleus around which everything else seemingly orients itself.

As much as “Don't Analyze” provides a solid introduction, it's the subsequent five-movement Tamalpais that's the centerpiece. Designed to capture in musical form the beauty and terrain of Mount Tamalpais in Northern California, this ambitious suite's forty minutes are as picturesque as the setting itself. It's an intricately structured epic that, consistent with Krock's approach, grants numerous solo spots to the band's players. Nick Grinder contributes a memorable trombone turn to the second part “Steep Ravine,” as does Finnish guitarist Olli Hirvonen, whose shredding here and elsewhere evidences Krock's penchant for metal-inflected material. Adding a different colour, vibraphonist Yuhan Su takes an extended solo during the fourth part, “Dipsea Steps,” following which alto saxist Charlotte Greve and mute trumpeter Kenny Warren make their own mellifluous presences felt. Episodes of ferocity alternate with moments of languour, and the vivid colours of the instrumentation do much to amplify the kaleidoscopic design. As sprawling and wide-ranging as Tamalpais is, it retains cohesiveness because of the band's committed performance and the recurrence of particular voices, Hirvonen's for example.

January 2019