The thing about mechanical music, or minimalist music, is that after a while one starts to hear the groove that is buried within the music, despite it desperately wanting to hide that side of itself. Every aspect of music is on a spectrum, but that spectrum loops back around at the ends so that any parameter, if it gets extreme enough, starts to seem like exactly its inverse. Take Kraftwerk for example, that music is so stilted and stiff and mechanical to the greatest possible extent that it actually seems to swing. Or take the incredibly highly organized and structured music of integral serialism. It is so ordered and every parameter is so thoroughly thought out that the music actually goes beyond order and starts to sound like chaos. Boulez starts to sound like Cage.

Well, that was a long way of saying that Chicago Kraut/prog/psych rockers CAVE are back with their 3rd album, “Threace.” Every song, on their previous releases, is an exercise in singularity. The groove (or lack of groove that becomes grove) locks in and doesn’t let go. Every riff is distilled to a thumping, driving, powerful, robotic cycle. Stereolab on acid trying to play Black Sabbath: that’s CAVE. That pretty much says it all.

Check out the video for “Shikaakwa” below, and some of their other videos up on the Drag City page. Highly recommended for fans of, well, yes, Stereolab and Black Sabbath.

“Threace” is currently available on Drag City as a CD, LP, Cassette, mp3 or FLAC download. You can check out more tracks here and here. CAVE is currently on tour around the US.