Schizo Fun Addict's Diamond

The beat is all wrong. We've become used to hearing popular music set to a certain rhythm, a certain pattern of beats, whether they're rooted in r&b traditions, or minimalist classical, or the dreadful, clinical white drumming of all rock bands from Coldplay downward. We take the beats for granted, that there's only one of a set way of filling in the space behind the melody and harmonics, there's only one of a limited number of approaches to fleshing out sounds that otherwise could be too stark or alien for popular consumption. When a band takes those beats away, or surreally juxtaposes them across genres?and it doesn't happen often?the effect is both instantly jarring and ultimately refreshing. The safety net is withdrawn, the comforting layer of the THUD THUD THUD has gone and the listener is faced with the problem of navigating unfamiliar territory alone without even a rudimentary guide.

New York's Schizo Fun Addict have a fascinating, almost atonal, seemingly random approach to male/female harmony that instantly lifts them above their more mundane peers. On songs like the Guided by Voices cover "The Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory" and a constantly surprising "Halo," they recall dissonant, magical bands like Royal Trux, Bongwater and Scotland's Pastels. Sure, they sound psychedelic, if you choose to equate psychedelia with confusion and mystery and sex. Guitars reverberate through a delirious and saturated haze. Voices drop in and out, like a waking dream. Sounds wash over the listener like a messy surf, one that carries any amount of musical flotsam in its wake: trumpets, snatches of old radio programs. At one point?the end of side one, actually?the album makes a stark leap from experimental lo-fi into tricksy jazz and energetic dance-floor style rhythms, plus a little bhangra, resulting in the mind-fuck sweep of "Chakra Tease."

Indeed, the second half of this record could be mistaken for Fatboy Slim and the Orb, and not just in a loud club, or under heavy drugs, either. "Victory Position" contains beats so distorted they could take the next Creamfields Festival by absolute storm, no worries. It's like Lo-Fidelity Allstars could be, if only they had some courage and a little conviction.

This album, Schizo Fun Addict's second, is like an aural counterpart to the Australian film Muriel's Wedding. With most media one quickly learns to predict what happens next, but with both the disc and the movie what actually happens isn't even the inverse of what one expects but something far more alarming. There is a story about how singer Jet Wintzer stopped speaking at the age of four after being visited by angels in a dream who told her never to raise her voice except in song (and the story continues), which is frankly so rubbish it's probably true. These people are very strange.