It might be construed as a bit of an oversimplification to declare that this album is a scattered, ugly, mess, but on "Dead Drunk", it almost seems like Terrestrial Tones are deliberately aiming for this effect. A creation from the fevered minds of Animal Collective's Dave Portner and Black Dice's Eric Copeland, this album is depending on your point of view, either a work of staggering genius, a confused mishmash of ideas with occasional flashes of inspiration, or a cobbled together mass of songs that weren't good enough to make it onto the albums of the creator's other bands. Personally, I'm going to go mainly from the middle column, with just a shade of the "cobbled together mass of songs" for flavour.

There's no doubting that the music presented here is eclectic and bizarre, in only the way that music put together by a couple of musicians known for trippy psych can manage. While both Animal Collective and Black Dice at times employ some semblance of pop structure and accessibility in their music, what's been put together here is so off-kilter, alienating, and experimental, that it's probably not going to have the as wide an appeal.

Each track is off-putting because it usually smashes three or four different musical ideas together into one track. The effect is almost as if there is more than one song actually being played at any given time. Car Fumes, for example, weds together a looping sample of a whistling flute, some incoherent drunken rambling from Copeland, and lo-fi synth lines. On its own, each idea is interesting enough, but they're all smashed together in a way that's dissonant and jarring.

The tracks that follow are just as dissonant. The Sailor resembles nothing if not a sailing ship running aground on some sharp rocks while being attacked by a phosphorescent sea monster, with its conflicting electronic loops being covered in a gritty layer of seething crackle. Magic Trick either involved the inhalation of a couple of cylinders of helium, or some speeding up of the vocal track, but either way it sounds like it was a lot more fun to record than it is to listen to.

I guess that the whole grating, unmusical aspect of this album is the whole point, but just because these two can release a jumble like this, it doesn't mean that they should. Those that can actually sit through a whole Mr Bungle album might enjoy this, as will those that rant and rave enthusiastically over every single thing that Animal Collective do. However, everyone else is advised to approach this album with extreme caution.