During the last half-decade Joe Westerlund became engrossed in studying the clave, the metric pattern that first defined so much Afro-Cuban and Latin music and then drifted into almost every corner of jazz and rock. What did it mean for an idea to be so flexible, for it to fit so many forms while retaining its own essence? The result is a leap into the unknown for Westerlund: Curiosities from the Shift, a 12-track playground of endlessly interwoven beats and melodies, where Westerlund's clave enthusiasm collides with his textural experimentalism, where his rhythmic symphony of one shakes hands with friends decorating this space alongside him. This album captures a kind of working roadmap for the terrain Westerlund explores, from the call-and-response glory of opener "Nu Male Uno" to the uncanny amorphousness of closer "Felt Like Floating." Each track is defined by an identifiable rhythm, like the loping strut at the center of "Midpoint" and the head-nodding pulse that winds through "Persurverance." Playful but tender, wistful but wondrous, driven by beats but not bound by them, this is Westerlund's definitive statement so far, a solo drummer record that opens wide to reveal a musical and emotional landscape richer than perhaps even he imagined he might find.

• Genre: Pop
• Label: PSYCHIC HOTLINE
• Label: PSYCHIC HOTLINE
• Genre: POP