DON CABALLERO
WHAT BURNS NEVER RETURNS (25TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION) (TOUCH & GO)
TRANSPARENT YELLOW 2xLP LIMITED EDITION. "As the purveyor of brainy, muscular instrumental rock, Don Caballero spent most of its early years labeled the "Geeks from Pittsburgh who don't sing." Now that the rest of the indie-rock world has warmed up to instrumental rock (see the popularity of Tortoise, et al.), Don Caballero reemerges from hiatus with its third full-length, What Burns Never Re-turns.
Staying ahead of the learning curve, the band employs little of the muscle that marked its earlier efforts, instead adopting a more high-brow, abstract approach to its music making.
The band is not improvis-ing per se, but creating meticulously arranged, post-Kind Crimson-like songs that attack odd time signatures.
Stunning in its acrobatic musician-ship, intriguing in its relentless experimentalism, What Burns_ is indeed a welcome return." - Tad Hendrickson, CMJ New Music Report // "The follow up to 1995's monolithic "Don Caballero 2", "What Burns Never Returns" is a study in industrial-strength grace, like some archaic machine heaving in exorable arabesques.
The metallic guitars and grinding rhythm section interlock with mechanistic precision, yet a very human friction shoots sparks of real beauty." - AJ Sutton, Billboard // "What superior minds conceived these eight amazing instrumentals, at once impossibly complex and yet powerfully direct, and what mere men have the strength and discipline to perform them? _ There are no drug-gy lyrics or samples or ironic reappropriations of outré instruments here - just thrilling purity and exhilarating single-mindedness." - The Sunday Times UK