Experimental Dental School

On Experimental Dental School’s new and fourth full-length, Forest Field — which is being offered as free download on its website — the group comes across as one you’d love to dance to. If only you could. Unless you’re both schizophrenic and quadruple-jointed, there’s little chance of getting into the groove of Forest Field‘s stuttering, spastic beats and flesh-stripping textures. But that’s not a bad thing: The duo of drummer Shoko Horikawa and guitarist Jesse Hall use an array of instruments, vocal techniques and effects pedals to modulate post-punk until it becomes a fractured prog-fuck of almost jazz-like proportions. That said, there’s plenty of open space and pretty vistas to XDS’s music, a glee and virtuosity that grounds the group’s more abstract and abrasive tendencies. It may not be dance-punk, exactly, but you can thank them for that when they take the stage of the hi-dive for a set of puzzling yet wholly satisfying sonic surrealism.