The Weekly Riff: Pyrrhon “Balkanized” by Dylan DiLella

Look, I’ll be honest with you guys and gals: sometimes I worry that a “Weekly Riff” feature can be pointless or redundant or whatnot. I mean, you have ears. You’re a serious guitarist. Often you can just easily figure this shit out for yourself.

Well hoooo boy, that’s not the fucking case with Pyrrhon is it? There’s a barely controlled chaos to the guitar work that’s not unlike pushing a normal guitarist down the stairs, but he topples into some explosive yet meticulously orchestrated Rube Goldberg machine. Or if I had to describe it purely based on sound, well I kind of imagine that these are the kind of riffs you’d wind up with if you strapped rocket skates to King Crimson’s Adrian Belew and Melt Banana’s Agata and launched them straight at each other. And maybe you hopped them up on amphetamines first.

In short, these are some weird, difficult riffs.

If you want more tunes like “Balkanized” up there, you may want to get your hands (or your virtualized “e-hands”) on the band’s full length, The Mother of Virtues. You can grab it at Pyrrhon’s Bandcamp page.