When the three core members of a band all live in different cities, working together can be a challenge. Tristeza guitarist Christopher Sprague lives in Oakland, California, but the band’s bassist, Luí­s Hermosillo, resides some 800 kilometres to the south in Tijuana, Mexico. Drummer James Lehner is based even farther away, in Michigan. Somehow, though, the three managed to be in the same place long enough to record a new album, Fate Unfolds, even if they weren’t all together when the songs were composed.

“Those were all written over little jam sessions, where there’s just two dudes, three dudes; whoever can get together for that little session,” says Lehner, reached en route to Tristeza’s rehearsal space in West Oakland, where he and his bandmates are meeting up with touring sidemen Drew Andrews (keyboards) and Cameron Stephens (guitar). “And then there were a couple of songs that were kind of just written in the studio. So there wasn’t a lot of normal band practice—get together, rehearse, write songs—going on for this record.”

It doesn’t show. Maybe it’s because the band has been around for so long (Sprague, Hermosillo, and Lehner starting playing together in 1997), but Tristeza plays with near-telepathic tightness, whether navigating the twisty math-rock rhythms of “Castellí²n” or the steel-pulse dub of “Mr. Beat/Street Tax”. The group is usually categorized as a postrock act, but several of the tracks on Fate Unfolds find it flirting with world music. The spiralling guitar lines and rolling-thunder toms of “Blkflmngo” sound like a particularly muscular take on West African highlife, while “Floripa” melds a samba-inspired beat with jazzy electric piano and “Manitas” is spiced with a dash of unexpected gamelan percussion.

Lehner acknowledges that he and his bandmates draw inspiration from the sounds of other cultures, particularly from the grooves of old Afrobeat and Tropicália records. “That stuff, all from the ’60s and ’70s, from all over the world, always ends up sounding the best,” the drummer insists. “Real basic recording, nothing too hi-fi about it, and it’s just capturing the real vibe of the musicians, how they’re playing together and everything.”

That’s also a fair description of Fate Unfolds. It’s not a particularly slick-sounding affair, but adventurous music fans will find much to love in the interplay between the various instruments. What they won’t find is any singing. Throughout its 12-year career, Tristeza has remained a strictly instrumental outfit, but Lehner says that could very well change.

“There’s actually a few songs on this new record that I wish would have had some kind of vocals,” he notes. “It’s hard for any of us to do it, because we have enough going on as it is. But it would be cool if we could get some kind of collaborators, people we knew who would do a good job laying down some vocals—even in another language. Anything to keep it worldly and interesting. That way, even if you don’t understand the language, it just adds kind of a cool element.”

Tristeza plays the Media Club on Sunday (December 6).