Time Inside a Year

One of Dave McDonnell's biggest takeaways from putting time in with dozens of outfits is a desire for his own music to be immediate and reactive, mindful of pulse and the body's innate rhythm but also cerebral. A groove-oriented framework functions as rhythmic scaffolding for his complex harmonic motifs: witness the stacked polyrhythms on the hard-driving "Bullitt" and lithe "Vox Orion," or the lively Latin feel of "Nodes of the Moon." "Brandywine" is hook-laden and swings hard, similar to the bookends of "Bakers Man," the bulk of which is dominated by explosive free-improv fireworks.