Dysrhythmia in time.
Anyone who plays a musical instrument knows how hard it is to invent a new sound or style. Sure, you can play every Ramones riff ever written, but try to make something truly fresh with the same chords everyone from Mississippi Fred McDowell to the White Stripes have been using all these years. It's not easy.
Every musician worth their salt strives to create a sound that is uniquely their own. Most fail, especially these days. That's why we're plagued with 70,000 pop-punk bands who have that same whiny singer who always seems to be bitching how they ripped their heart out over something, someone or some other meaningless crap.
It's not impossible to find a band that actually creates unique music; you just have to dig a little bit. Take Philadelphia's Dysrhythmia. The moment you pop their new album Pretest into the CD player, you've no choice but to pay attention. It sounds like nothing you've ever heard from a rock band before. For these guys, time signatures and rhythms are not static laws of composition, but fluid structures that can be shaped to the trio's own musical ideas.
"Bastard" weaves all over the place in this manner, sounding as if the song's structure will collapse into a complete mess of guitar scales and beats at any point. But that's the genius of their sound. It is a chaotic blending of divergent rhythms that comes close to the brink of self-destructing without actually doing it. By retaining this sense of impending collapse, the music develops a nice edge, especially on "Heat Sink" and "Catalog of Personal Faults."
I would be selling the band short if I left you with the impression that they are simply prog-rock heads showing off their adeptness at running jazz scales. Ninety-nine percent of the solo albums made by guys featured on the cover of Guitar magazine are wretched for this reason-all chops, no songwriting. But Dysrhythmia melds their superb abilities with a knack for harmony and dynamics. As "My Relationship," "Running Shoe of Justice" or "And Just Go" prove, they know how to balance "going-off" with playing what is right for a song. There is a human feel to these songs-emotional builds and passages can be found throughout-that proves they are capable of rising above robotic tests of dexterity. The only modern bands I can suggest as a close comparison would be Primus or Rollins Band, circa 1992.
Despite being an all-instrumental band, there isn't a moment on the album where they lose your attention. Their playing is spontaneous, driving and outside the boundaries of any label you could possibly pin on them. It is completely unique rock music, and that's a rare bird these days.