Don Caballero
Don Caballero II
»
|
NATN Recommended
Don Caballero
Don Caballero II
Touch & Go, 1995
RiYL: Shellac, King Crimson, Jesus Lizard, Helmet, Sonic Youth |
The sound is ever more analytic, despite such chaotic surroundings. The various aspects of the music are meditative, like an orchestra made of seasoned instrumentalists. The psychedelic edge so prominent on For Respect has not dissolved, but here it's more a part of a radiant harmonic imagination. The avant-garde extremes of "please tokio, please THIS IS TOKIO" are never pedantic or fanciful, rather they are melodic figures caressed in a trance, pauses, breaks and time changes, reckless fugues and carefully spread out dissonance. Everything peacefully co-exists, with an end to all of the excess somewhere in sight, between the screechings of what sounds like an electric saw at maximum volume, and one colossal distortion that is extended for eternity.
Better still is "Repeat Defender," a party for thin ears that lashes from an exhausted beginning to an interval of supersonic hisses articulated in the most urgent fashion. In the fierce roars that shake "Dick Suffers Is Furious With You," to the insinuated counterpoints that cradle "No One Gives A Hoot About FAUX-ASS Nonsense," one hears the echo of Soft Machine and The Nice, absorbed in the brutal noise of our times. There's a lot of erudition in this atonal funk, blues and jazz blend. And it's curious that it surfaces most in brief passages of "Stupid Puma" and "P,P,P, antless," where the searing guitar heat and the body-rocking vibrations tip-toe toward Joe Satriani or Eric Johnson territory. Less clear is the pure abstraction of the reverberating and out of focus chords in "Cold Knees (In April)."
Don Caballero II is more ambitious, sophisticated and incendiary than For Respect, even if some semblance of that album's menacing outlook is lost. The band has coined a form of rock music that has not lost its original lucid appeal, but has buried it under layers and layers of sophisticated playing, in a process that resembles what happened to jazz during its transition from big-band swing music, to bebop and then free jazz. This record's historical importance cannot be overlooked.
PIERO SCARUFFI | Piero Scaruffi runs the exhaustive music database Scaruffi.com. A native of Italy, he has also been praised for his work on the General Theory of Relativity, formal theories of the mind, and artificial intelligence. And no, we aren't making that up.