Don Caballero
What Burns Never Returns

Math-Rock? If you want... but in reality What Burns Never Returns by Don Caballero is much more; it is what comes closest in rock to the most abstract experiments of jazz avant-garde, it is pure sonic research.

After the powerful For Respect and the impetuous and chaotic II, the explosive energy of the band is harnessed and put at the service of frenzied instrumental experimentation. Not that the previous albums dealt with predictable stuff, on the contrary, but if before there was a sense of uncontrolled creativity unable to find a direction, now everything seems meditated and designed down to the smallest details to build a musical architecture whose geometry is astounding.

The powerful and anarchic riffs, which had been the strength of the previous works, almost completely disappear, making way for "percussonic" and bouncy guitars that love to repeat ad infinitum with minimal variations. Even the rhythm section is anesthetized in favor of more precise and schematic syncopations; the pieces are marked by continuous jumps from one pattern to another with perfect fits (exemplified in "Don Caballero 3") and the melody is swept away in favor of treacherous musical geometries (see the splendid "Room Temperature Suite") and acidic sharpness ("From The Desk Of Elsewhere Go"). An album undoubtedly challenging to listen to, but of a beauty that shines with its own light. After all, Don Caballero do not seek to charm, they are not after beauty, they are sound hunters, architects in search of new and strange harmonies. Everything seems in its rightful place, but do not be deceived, the compositions of this work are the most abstract and deconstructed contemporary instrumental rock has managed to produce.

Indeed, What Burns Never Returns is not an album in the usual sense. There is no beginning nor end, no permeating regular structure. It appears more like an inextricable tangle of sounds with twisted geometry. Don Caballero, in their constant and spasmodic attempt to redefine the rock concept, to find that final point, that happy oasis to bask in, produce something that seems more like a musical treatise, a decalogue on what rock can be today. Don Caballero, who were among the first groups to update instrumental rock with the new sounds imposed by the first generation post-rock bands, reach something completely new yet not fully defined, a stage in a journey that doesn’t really have a destination. The greatness of such bands perhaps lies in this continuous quest that doesn’t rest on what has already been done (as demonstrated by the new project undertaken by Ian Williams with Battles, but that's another story).