Force + Form

Anthony Child’s third album as Surgeon contains just four tracks, ranging from eight and a half to nearly 12 minutes. The snatches of melody that popped up on his debut, 1997’s Basictonalvocabulary, are almost entirely stripped away here, leaving just a chromed Terminator skeleton: pounding beats, the occasional vocal sample chopped too finely to even function as language, a single droning synth note. But the pieces are suitelike, moving through distinct phases and going down surprising tangents (wait for the recording of him in a Kalamazoo hotel room near the end of “Returning to the Purity of Current”) even as they deliver relentless, concussive percussion.