KnCurrent is a radically different conception, setting brennan’s hard-edged, expressionist saxophone amidst a minefield of collectively improvising, amplified strings, an ensemble that expands the sonic field into a maze of percussive and electronic strings. The group’s startling texture is apparent immediately with a maelstrom of fluctuating electronic burbles, beeps, whirs and glissandi before brennan enters as an insistently human presence, his saxophone at once convulsive, choked and explosive by turn. The whole program is a rich and resounding success.
– Stuart Broomer, The Free Jazz Collective— December 2025
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This is powerful music for electrified strings and an alto saxophone, music that can make even jaded listeners pause and backtrack. Let’s, by the way, pause and backtrack: great new music featuring the diddley-bo, really? Absolutely.
– Pierre Crépon, The New York City Jazz Record — December 2025
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It should be no surprise, when a patrick brennan album is in the offing, that the title, KnCurrent, encapsulates an evocative set of sonic signifiers. No one reading these pages will need any introduction to these musicians or their feats of instrumental prowess. It’s the amalgamation, the way each musician reacts to the other’s implied ensemble, that raises this creative foray to dizzying heights. The creative streams form a river of celebratory utterance as each player inhabits a space opened up by layered exchange. Mode, groove, and timbre coalesce at these moments bursting with implication. From end to end, such occasional instances are foregrounded, mysteriously, at the most unexpected but crucial moments, and, just as suddenly, they dissolve, leaving only memories of concurrence in convergence.
– Marc Medwin, Point of Departure — June 2025
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Continuing their sound explorations four veterans of New York’s creative music community manifest their ideas during this paced and provocative session of group improvisation. Balancing voltage and virtuosity, electric instruments add a new dimension to the program. As the only horn player, brennan is both precise and passionate. Combining an unusual instrumental mix with skillful sonic considerations, KnCurrent is assiduous, aggressive and assured.
– Ken Waxman, JazzWord — June 2025
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The unconventional instrumentation combined with the strong-minded personalities of the four experienced improvisers, all equipped with inventive extended techniques, and the high-energy dynamics of KnCurrent turn this ensemble into a restless sonic lab in which timbre is a musical factor on a par with pitch and rhythm. KnCurrent creates its own collective – polyneuroceptive, as one of the pieces is titled – voice and nuanced textured tapestry of sonic collisions.
– Eyal Hareuveni, Percorsi Musicale — May 2025
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I can confirm the radical nature of this musical experiment. Natural, but often electronically distorted sounds of the violin and guitar, a unique didley-bo sound and sharp, like a sword thrust, alto saxophone parts, together form an extremely bright and unusual palette of sounds. At the same time, the individuality of each of the musicians is very clearly manifested in these improvisational compositions. This unusual music is played by truly great masters, who listen to each other well.
– Leonid Auskern, Jazz Quad — May 2025
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The album KnCurrent is destined to get people talking about it, even if it doesn’t belong to what is commonly defined as mainstream. Between violins, guitars, saxophones and invented instruments, the four musicians will delight fans of this complex but engaging musical genre. The music contained in the grooves of this soon-to-be-released album is made of pulsating matter, lived life, piercing abstractions and atoms of beauty stripped down but present in abundance. It is not background music or for distracted listening. Instead, it requires dedication. Try turning off your cell phones and starting your, as they say today, listening experience. And let it be a genuine one
– Gian Paolo Galasi, mywhere.it — April 2025
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A new patrick brennan quartet explores the uncharted territories of sound with key improvisers to explore concurrently open areas where instrumental hierarchies are erased. KnCurrent does not impose form; rather, it emerges from the simultaneous intersection of mobile pulses, textures and sound architectures. It is simultaneity in combustion.
– Alberto Gutiérrez, Jazzóologo — April 2025
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