*** Don Caballero

WHAT BURNS NEVER RETURNS

(Touch & Go)

It'd be easy to peg Don Caballero as the quintessential math-rock band. Built on cyclical riffs and odd-meter beats performed with exacting, if not antiseptic, precision, their data-spew instrumental jams lean toward angular harmonies, organic loops and jagged syncopations.

But that's deconstructive thinking. What makes What Burns Never Returns so alluring is the wider angle, the way their linear fascinations and mosaic interlocutions produce a pixilated image, a cathode ray, a Chuck Close tessellary of pointillist proportions with post-punk bass, drums, guitar, and no vocals. If image is everything, Don Caballero are nothing; but if design is everything, then DC bring to mind a few scenarios: Steve Reich grows tired of the academic life and forms a post-rock band with Ronald Shannon Jackson; Iannis Xennakis gives Greece the heave-ho and hooks up with Kim Thayil and Matt Cameron in Seattle; Talk Talk re-form with Terry Bozzio on drums, performing in front of painter Frantisek Kupka's geometric, Orphic canvases.

-- James Rotondi