The world might not be fully aware of the fact, but it’s divided in to two separate camps – those who’ll get a real kick out of this new Black Dice album, and a much larger crowd who’ll find it distinctly annoying. It’s not that one camp is wrong, or right. Even as a member of the former, I can see that the latter have an extremely defensible point. And that has me slightly worried – why is it that Mr Impossible (an album made up almost entirely of peculiar noises arranged in way that at times seems specifically designed to infuriate) doesn’t send me completely round the bend, leaving me like the infuriated, dribbling mess it probably should? Is there something wrong with me, that I’m kinda loving this?

Ah what the hell, even if it is symptomatic of there being some errant wiring work somewhere in my skull, at least I’ve got another record I like in my collection. And whether you count it as a work of genius or as an LP that could feasibly be employed as an instrument of a mild form of torture, what you have to admit is that Mr Impossible is never boring. And that’s what I love about it, and these three Brooklynites in general; there’s a playfulness and sense of humour here that is all too rare in the world of experimental/noise/avant-garde music (or whatever genre name you want to ascribe to the band), a childlike glee unique to Black Dice that I find utterly infectious.

More of a distillation of the ideas expressed across their last ten years of being A Thing than it is a stab at the mainstream or a career left turn, the fact that this does indeed bear resemblance to a fair few Black Dice records before it isn’t necessarily a problem (plus, bear in mind that when you’re a band like Black Dice, you take a left turn every other note). For as the owner of a number of their albums, all of which I enjoy but in all honesty struggle to point out the differences in, this is certainly the one I’d recommend most to someone I thought could stomach it (and again, if you can’t, that doesn’t make you wrong – life’s going to be a lot kinder to you than it is to the others).

Why? Well, it’s just that the incessant repetitive passages are funnier, the manipulated sounds more peculiar, and the thing just hangs together like a body of work more than a collection of sounds in a way I don’t think they’ve managed with quite such aplomb previously. If you’re wired correctly for it, their debut on Domino records is a front-to-back joy to listen to. Once attuned to its curiosities, the barrage of garbled electronica of the fine track that opens the record (‘Pinball Wizard’) becomes something you start to recognise as a composition with form and shape as opposed to something that’s trying to eschew those very things. And now you’ve got your way in, you can enjoy the whole freaky thing – ‘The Jacker’’s distant yelps and contorted rhythms, noise-rock-gone-gabba crossover ‘Pigs’ and the comparatively serene, bordering on melodic ‘Shithouse Drifter’ being highlights to a record on which you won’t struggle to find plenty.