You can draw a line from Aaron Parks' 2008 debut Invisible Cinema and Little Big to the new CD Little Big II: Dreams of a Mechanical Man while missing out the keyboardist's less groove-orientated ECM works. The gifted pianist-composer's Little Big Quartet is a key inheritor of Brad Mehldau's integration of contemporary jazz-improv, classical piano and ambient post-rock on his groundbreaking CD Largo release from 2002. The new record is as seductively hypnotic, tunefully ambient as previous albums but there's a gripping rhythmic underpinning that belies its song-like simplicity.

The production values are superb and Greg Tuohey's tasteful guitar lines echo Metheny and Steely Dan and the pianist doesn't waste a note among his blissfully airy compositional dreamscapes. If you're looking for something leftfield but without the heaviness, Aaron's definitely your man.