19th-century German novelist Berthold Auerbach is long forgotten by the masses in modern day society, but his best-known quote about music, "Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life," still lives on but pays no mind to the fact that some of the finest music can be reflective of everyday life.

The human population experiences a daily yin and yang built of creation and destruction, hope and despair, joy and anger, simplicity and complexity, order and chaos, and a variety of other contrasting principles. Alto saxophonist David Binney's Graylen Epicenter is a microcosm of daily life, reflecting all of these opposing ideals, as presented through this fascinating music.

While each of the album's ten pieces bears its own unique fingerprint, virtually every composition is built on tectonic aural plates that shift, connect, and overlap in endlessly fascinating combinations. Binney drew up the blueprint for each massive musical edifice, but his construction crew of able-bodied musicians helps him with the hard labor as it makes music that sounds like the aural equivalent of M.C. Escher's "House Of Stairs."

The slash-and-burn attitude that defined Aliso (Criss Cross, 2010) is replaced by broader evolutionary arcs and more detailed arrangements, with the opening tracks providing prime examples of Binney's bold vision. "All Of Time" covers everything from paranoid guitar and piano runs, alternating with more relaxed horn lines, to drum team tantrums, courtesy of