Dysrhythmia

Barriers And Passages

[4/5] While it’s still a metal label at heart, Relapse Records has taken some major blind-faith leaps into the avant-garde with its current roster–which includes horror-soundtrack oddballs Zombi and perennial math-rock titans Don Caballero–with Dysrhythmia being perhaps the hardest to pigeonhole of them all. Commercially doomed by their very aesthetic–prodigious, harmonically wild Sonny Sharrock-meets-Bill Frisell guitar atmospherics weaving through an impossibly difficult (and impressively heavy) rhythm section–the Brooklyn-based power trio are nevertheless making some of the boldest music in contemporary instrumental rock. Barriers And Passages, Dysrhythmia’s fourth album (and first with Behold The Arctopus bassist Colin Marston as a permanent member), once again straddles the precipices of jazz, metal and higher mathematics, but overall (save for the sprawling ambient track “Luminous”), it’s tighter–and subsequently more aggressive–than anything in their arsenal. So many bands find complacency kicking in after album No. 3–these guys sound like they’re just getting hungry.
(RELAPSE) Aaron Burgess