Customer Reviews

What Burns Never Returns

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This album stands apart from their others. It seems heavily influenced by Storm & Stress' bursts of jazz-fusion. I'll be the first to admit: this is not for the faint of heart. Just when they seem to be on the verge of absolute chaos and discordance, they roll back into some incredibly hard-rocking harmonious melody. If you've never heard DC before, you may be better off trying Don Caballero 2 or American Don first (both albums, I feel, are a bit more accessible). However, if you're willing to listen, and listen carefully, you will be deeply rewarded.
Don Cab's music deconstructs your mental landscape and uses the pieces to rig an aural spaceship, which proceeds to musically trance-port you to galaxies far, far away. This album will take you places you've never been, even if you've hitched a ride with 'em before.

for a lot of people i would guess this will not be an easy listen. it's going to take time and energy if you want to understand, like, or love this album. it stretches the outer limits of the imagination while somehow managing to maintain some sort of simplicity. this is not for the weak, short attention spanned, wannabe music fan. with continued listens in different environments i think you'll see it a bit clearer. the drumming on this album is done extremely well, and are probably the only thing staying true to some form. however, the rest of the intrumentation is truely interesting. whats required here is to change your degree of perception, and mood about 6 degrees and you will find this to be enjoyable. peace

"you have to check out Don Caballero" my friends all said, and I finally did. I think I understand Cubist art now. The beauty of Don Caballero, by far, is the percussion. I've never heard a band where the drums were the lead instrument ("D"on "C"aballero - "D"amon "C"he, coincidence??? I think not). Abstract beats, sometimes blisteringly fast, always completely engaging, never slow or boring set the tone. Once Damon has laid down his mastermind groove, the remaining band members ever so meekly offer their sounds to the god of rhythm. Luckily, we never hear anything beyond guitars and bass (no vocals here). Ultimately, they're a jam band but as other reviewers have said, they're nothing like typical jam bands. My only complaint with the album is that, with a few exceptions, the guitars just don't seem to measure up to the creative genuis of the rest of the outfit. If you're a drummer, you'll love every single track. If you're not, you might not be such a fan. Particular highlights are tracks 4 and 5 where the whole unit seems to coalesce into a beautifully quirky harmony. Unless you've done some serious homework, I doubt you've heard anything quite like the Don before.

The question at hand is not whether or not this record is good- It easily surpassed any expectations I had of ANY rock outfit at this time. While I think both "our Caballero" and Don Cabballero II" are both great records in their own right, "What Burns" easily blows both away. This record seems to be the final step in don cab's evolution. The music on this album is a continued exploration of all things associated with traditional metal but WAY WAY WAY more intellegent. Yes, double-bass, finger tapping, and hammer-ons abound in a multitude that would please any cannibal corpse fan but it is in these stock cliches of "rock" that don cab goes about destroying and reshaping what is known as modern rock. Time signatures and tempos changes clash and collide and usually meet in a sort of resolution not found in the similarly executed storm & stress album. If you like storm & stress you will like this but if you liked earlier don cab albums you may find it harder to get into this album. The songs are even less linear on this album than ever before and they sometimes wander into the area of "Free" music ala Ornette Coleman's and many others. If you have the patiance for this you will be rewarded and amazeds throug repeated listenings. I could gush about this album ad naseum but I'll stop now knowing I have done my duty for the good of man. Buy this. Listen to it at a very high volume.

but realizing that it doesn't matter.
I'm just going to add to the hyperbole here and write that What Burns...
is one of the best "rock" albums I have ever heard or ever will hear. Simply otherworldly, as if aliens heard snippets of earthly music on their way through the interstellar spaces and decided to make something in response to the fragments they captured.
Be warned though, if you're not prepared to interact with the music, you'll be in for some frustration: this is not an album that gives up its secrets willingly or easily.
The prototypical Don Cab elements are here, tapped inerlocking guitars, rock solid bass, and fluid/spastic drumming, but they have evolved. Williams and Banfield play more fragile, shimmering lines here, reminiscent of The Belew/Fripp sound in 8o's King Crimson, and as if they are teasing out the history of rock licks through some alien filtering process. Pat Morris locks in with Damon Che more frequently, but does get to play some fat, funky(?)patterns. Damon Che is the octopus, but his sound is drier, focused, and more integrated than in previous efforts.
Album opener "Don Cab 3" starts out with the same drum line that ends II and rides it into an epic that shifts from abstract soundscape to bass heavy groovefest. Along with "Slice where you live like pie", and "The world in perforated lines", easily the album's highlights. Keep in mind, that is a relative statement, as the entire album is like a hologram, where the whole can be teased out of any portion, and you may find yourself loving something completely different the next time you hear it.
"June is finally here" is probably as close to a straightforward song on the album, riding alternating swaths of dissonance and beauty to a thoroughly satisfying conclusion, sounding like every summer you've ever run through, wishing it would never end.
So, in conclusion, buy this album, but only if you've heard For respect or II. Going into this album without reference might turn you off to its charms, and that would be a tragedy.

Don Caballero can rule once again!! They are the masters of US alternative rock nowadays, sometimes in the vein of Djam Karet, but unlike such californian modern art rock band, the present band from Chicago is not ambient music-like...well through the corridors,within the Progressive ring,there's a strange rumor about their definitive break-up, but it could be simply a meditative pause and for this reason I don't think They won't be able to comeback. Anyway, coming back to the present issue, in my opinion the track "In the Absence of Strong Evidence to the Contrary" and "One May Step Out of the Way of the Charging Bull" are the highlights of the album, in some circumstances along with Room Temperature Suite" and "Delivering the Groceries at 138 Beats per Minute", which are original pieces of alternative rock... sometimes their music is hypnotic, tinged with odd colours given by repetitive and syncopated rhytms, over some strange avant-garde melodies (naturally there are not vocals, but their music make emerge such sense of melody). In other moments They build weird harmonies, but not in the manner of such RIO music or according the experimental mood by Henry Cow, for example...remaining anyway in the middle between the experimental chaos of this latter and a genuine and exposed sense of order, even though They stand up with their proud among the best modern alternative bands and a few other art rock bands, whose music is dignified enough!!

Recommended to the fans of modern art rock!!

This may be the weakest of Don Caballero's releases, but it still blows away almost any other band's best effort. Any Don Cab fan will not want to miss this, as it contains plenty of great instrumental math rock, and in some ways represents their most insane and advanced accomplishment. They never defied conventional rhythm, melody and harmony as radically as they did on this record.

The album starts off - literally - where Don Caballero 2 ended; the same killer drum groove that ended their second album starts the first track here, the amusingly titled "Don Caballero 3." But if you thought the second album played fast and loose with structure, wait till you hear this! It may sound like like completely random noodling, but I saw them play live on the "What Burns..." tour, and they played almost all of this album including the first track, and it sounded exactly like the album - what appears to be random noodling is in fact carefully orchestrated. Utterly mind-blowing.

The closest you get to a completely structured track is probably track 3: "Delivering the Groceries at 138 Beats per Minute." But even here, "structure" is a relative term - they can't resist a breakdown and major musical shift halfway through. At any rate, you get some killer grooves and some nice meter changes. The closer, "June is Finally Here" contains what may be the band's most beautiful moment: pure shimmering guitars abandon any trace of dissonance for a glorious conclusion to a jarring, stunning album.

And of course, the biggest attraction remains drummer Damon Che - aptly credited on this album as "octopus." Play the opening to track 4, "Slice Where You Live Like Pie" and know that here is one man who clearly has achieved complete independence of all four of his limbs.

Overall, not the band's best work. But still worth owning for any true fan of adventurous, challenging music.