"Taiga" is Russian for "forest". When I think of forests, I think of pastoral scenes, with majestic oak trees, long grass, and butterflies and adorable woodland animals scurrying about. I do not think about the sort of noise that comes out of the first track on this album, UMA, which sounds like a tribe of angry Japanese women dancing around a bonfire in a frozen pine forest in Siberia.

OOIOO are an experimental rock band from Japan, and the emphasis is on "experimental". The first song, for instance, is almost entirely built around tribal-sounding percussion, that may either be from a half-dozen drum kits, or from a collection of steel drums being pounded with frantic urgency. Occasional synth noises are the only companion to the frenzied call-and-response vocals, although some minimal sounds from what sounds like a heavily processed guitar do pop in at the end.

It's not all frenetic action though, UJA sounds less like a frozen boreal forest, and more like crossing a rope bridge over a gorge in the deepest African jungle, guided by a tribe of Japanese-speaking savages who have somehow come into possession of a half-dozen cheap synthesisers. It's a lot slower, but it's still just as primeval, the guitar loops that develop halfway through giving the track a hypnotic, vaguely psychedelic quality. Then, with absolutely no warning at all, the previous song is swept away, and a cheesy disco jam starts, for absolutely no reason at all.

Of course, this is just the sort of band that OOIOO are. Despite the occasional spells of harmony and almost tranquillity that develop in their works, at heart they're all about being as abrasive as possible and creating as corrosive a noise as possible. Witness, for example, the "screeching cat" sounds in IOA, which actually makes me wince whenever I hear it. Needless to say, this sort of music won't be for everybody, and while it's easy to appreciate "Taiga" as a piece of musical art, it's much harder to argue that it's actually you'd want to listen to on a regular basis.

Naturally, that disconnect between artistic merit and listening pleasure is the main drawback with this album. I can't see that many people enjoying having their eardrums blown out by the caustic noise that is the mainstay of this album. "Taiga" is like getting lost in a forest; it might be good for the soul, but it's not something that you'd like to do very often.