Dysrhythmia
Barriers And Passages

From their name alone, Dysrhythmia are complicated from the start. An overflowing trio of ideas, a project that developed through the seminal "Contraddiction" (from 2000, out of print and hard to find N.D.R.) and "No Interference" (easily purchasable through the small "Translation Loss" which reissued it in digipack) and continued with the melancholic "Pretest" of 2003, alongside splits and appearances in compilations and DVDs under the Relapse label, with which they are still under contract.

But it is with "Barriers and Passages" that they reach their peak: Jeff Eber (drums) Kevin Hufnagel (guitar) and the extraordinary Colin Marston on bass, finally a permanent part of the group, fuse the most disparate elements, finding themselves with a raw sound, "aggressive" in its odd times and its fast, schizo rhythms. It's experimentation without stylistic barriers, with an abrasiveness that the spiritual fathers of these cerebral travels (Don Caballero and King Crimson above all, but also Sonic Youth, and I could also daringly add decontextualized Meshuggah from their brutally metal habitat) never had. The variety of sounds in the album's 10 tracks also stands out, where everything seems absolutely necessary, where the virtuosities have that austerity that seems dissolved in most of today's releases, it manages to surprise anyone for different reasons, and everyone will read into it what they can grasp from this shard, from this representation in music of mental processes.

The Dysrhythmia project was born precisely with this intent: analyze and represent the human soul with instruments. And how can we not say that they hit the mark when listening to the vibrant "Pulsar" and "Appeared at First", compressed and sick mini-suites with a devastating bass, the lullaby of "Sleep Decayer" with its hypnotizing finale or the lighter, almost jazzy "Seal/Breaker/Void?"

A complete album, with a conception seemingly hostile and alien, but as inferred from the title, it is wise to keep in mind that for every barrier there is a passage, nothing is insurmountable, only by stopping at appearances would one remain trapped, without savoring the best album of 2006.