Joe Westerlund - Curiosities from the Shift (2025) [Hi-Res]

Joe Westerlund's 2024 album, Curiosities from the Shift, is a 12-track collection that fuses his prior experience in introspective, improvisational percussion music with a newfound obsession with the clave, a key metric pattern in Afro-Cuban, Latin music, jazz, and rock. Following his 2020 solo debut Reveries in the Rift and the 2023 album Elegies for the Drift, which focused on emotional frameworks and personal losses, Curiosities marks a leap into a more compositionally structured yet still experimental style centered on irrepressible, instinctual grooves.

Developed partly from sketches initially intended for Califone (a band Westerlund had played in), the album combines textural experimentalism (including percussion, electronics, and keyboards) with identifiable yet complex rhythms. The tracks display a multivalent approach, blending elements of dub, gamelan, and New Age with rhythmic foundations like a loping strut or boom-bap. The album was largely refined during unplanned extra studio time at Betty’s in North Carolina. After completing the core compositions, Westerlund invited seven friends, including Tim Rutili and saxophonist Sam Gendel, to contribute parts, adding further depth and grace to his rhythmic worlds. The album is considered the drummer's most definitive and rich solo work to date.

Tracklist:
1-1 Joe Westerlund - Nu Male Uno [3:34]
1-2 Joe Westerlund - Peebles ’n’ Stones [3:40]
1-3 Joe Westerlund - Tem [3:04]
1-4 Joe Westerlund - Fone [2:43]
1-5 Joe Westerlund - Can Tangle [3:36]
1-6 Joe Westerlund - Persurverance [6:24]
1-7 Joe Westerlund - Furahai [4:11]
1-8 Joe Westerlund - Ecstatic Guataca [6:01]
1-9 Joe Westerlund - A Trance Delay [4:50]
1-10 Joe Westerlund - Midpoint [4:42]
1-11 Joe Westerlund - Elegy (for OLAibi) [8:30]
1-12 Joe Westerlund;Sam Gendel - Felt Like Floating [4:28]