What Burns Never Returns

Don Caballero | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (June 9, 1998)
• Original Release Date: June 9, 1998
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Touch & Go Records
• ASIN: B000006NUS
• In-Print Editions: Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #66,531 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the greatest albums of all time, January 23, 2004

By 

D. Cormican (HELLertown, PA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: What Burns Never Returns (Audio CD)

I'd give this disc 10 stars if I could. Complex and challenging. This disc finds beauty in ugly places. The dynamics are the lynchpin of this CD as it easy flows from ugly noise to breathtakingly beautiful guitar lines (bizzare, but beautiful). Caballero's sound is built on sample pedals. Mike and Ian play a line on the guitar then sample and loop it and continue doing this to build up the sound. laying various guitar lines, one on top of the other. It creates a very rich, textured sound. This, however, being the last album Mike appears on, also means it is the last great Caballero album. American Don (which features only Ian on guitar) is hurt by the lack of a second guitarist. Without Mike it means all of the layering of guitars falls on one player, therefore the songs take longer to develop and you "feel" the technique much more on American Don.

Their sound is not entirely unheard of (King Crimson is a major influence), but the combination of harsher textures is completely fresh and unfortunately now very missed. Don Caballero called it quits for good after the tour for American Don. If you like Caballero, be sure to keep an ear out for a band named Battles, it features Ian Williams, along with John Stanier (Helmet) among others. It's not Caballero, but it is good.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Everything hasn't been already done afterall., July 18, 2000

By 

D. K. Malone (earth) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: What Burns Never Returns (Audio CD)

When I first saw Don Caballero play live in 1993, I liked them... but I had no idea they would later blossom into this wonderous beast. I'm a huge guitar fan, but I was just finally getting bored with guitar music. It had been so long since I heard something that was truly fresh... and this comes falling from out of the sky and knocks me flat. I know it's cheezy and a cliché, but this really does sound like "freedom". Free of all preconcepts of what a guitar band should sound like. (Though ironically they're, in a way, a drum band. Drummer Damon Che is considered to be the centerpiece of the group by many.) It's as though they had never played or even seen their instruments before, and were then stranded on a desert island with them and had to figure out how to play from scratch, with no Jimmy Pages or Neil Youngs or fricking Dime Bag Derreks (or whatever the heck his name is) to mimic. This is easily Caballero's best release so far. It has a certain grace that the first album (For Respect) didn't have, and it lacks the ugliness of the second album (Don Caballero 2). Can't wait to see what they come up with next.

If you like this album you might want to check out Storm & Stress, guitarist Ian Williams's "other" band. They're even more of a guitar freak out than this.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The current heavyweight champs show all their best moves, October 21, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: What Burns Never Returns (Audio CD)

Thanks to the dense abstraction of Don Caballero's wordless music, you can and will hear a lot of affinities in their sinewy behemoth grooves: King Crimson, Blind Idiot God, Steve Reich, Helmet, Slint, Pell Mell, Tortoise, etc... Or, you could say that in their own way they are the closest thing we have these days to a young, brash Van Halen. Not a best-selling outfit admittedly, they are still unbeatable as translators of experimental musical ideas into kick-___ rock. Like Polvo's "Cor-Crane Secret", this is the kind of record for those not yet converted to Jazz or Classical music, which is intense and riveting in every note and which develops with each listen. Don Cab lurch wildly, but don't lose their balance, and they never fail to be viscerally exciting as they flesh challenging ensemble compositions out into a colossal, ferociously saw-toothed sound. Jarring textures sustain and reward our attention. Three- and four- note figures repeat, rotate and vary mechanically with an intense and vibrant clockwork discipline. Cirrus streaks flicker by in the high-speed winds of distorted guitar harmonics. All the while, the drums chop and shred like the blades of a heavy Sikorsky. Any of Don Cab's records could rank with the top rock discs of the decade, but "What Burns Never Returns" -their third- is the most developed and crystalline.