Arrebato

Asheville, North Carolina math rockers Ahleuchatistas started out as a trio in the early 2000s, but had swapped out drummers and pared down to a guitar (Shane Parish) and drums (Ryan Oslance) duo by the time they’d hit the ten-year mark of their career. For the unwary, their evolution’s a little tricky to parse; they’ve careened from Beefheart-conversant prog to a sort of self-contained genre-agnostic mutation that lets the rhythm-warping instincts hit first and the classifications fall where they may. But Arrebato is one of those late-career refinements by a band accustomed to pulling off the unusual, making it a surprisingly effective entry point for neophytes. It’s energetically freeform but almost telekinetically tight, and in love with the possibilities of both complexity and directness, with pieces like the motorik-throws-a-rod rhythmic subterfuge of “La Faena” and the hyperspeed oscillations of “Sundowning” using their considerable virtuosity as the pretext to clobber you with joyful noise.