Glasgow’s Die Hard are, by the sounds of things, something of a drugs band. Perhaps taking inspiration from Spacemen 3’s legitimately hilarious/excellently titled Taking Drugs To Make Music To Take Drugs To, that’s precisely what they appear to have done here. It’s best that the word “appear” is stressed as this is such a brief, haphazard record one could be easily convinced that this is simply an approximation of that blissed-out stoner sound so many bands strive for – whether they’ve arrived at their version of it under the influence of Spiritualized or something stronger is a call only they can make.

Songs like ‘In the Garden’, with its tuneless, grating vocal and general sense of unpleasantness, mix with tracks like ‘Nailed to the Cross’, an awkward, Dirty Projectors-hugging stream of distorting voices conversing with disorienting math-rhythm beats, all hint of melody sadly buried. Not strong moments.

Sometimes they flip and drop a Flaming Lips/Royal Trux acoustic bash like ‘Here Goes The Rage’. They’re a little better at this – small dashes of sampled stringwork pulling together a sloppy tune sufficiently to make it memorable. They repeat the trick on ‘You Said We Might Be Dead’ but here an otherwise contemplative, whacked-out-of-its-tits chant is broken by a ton of treated chipmunk-high vocals.

Those horrific vocals, easily the worst sound on the album, show up again on the neatly named ‘See You Later Defribillator’, something of a chugging epic despite them.

Part of the problem here is that these songs are too short to hypnotise but still somehow manage to feel indulgent – the sense of humour for which the band are apparently renowned having has a hard time shining through among the massed mess of the formless ‘Hands’, an Animal Collective wash of beats, pings, jags, slashes and pops; and the likes of ‘Mmmm’, a nasty little industrial bit that taunts us with Flying Lotus vibes briefly before fading into another abyss of shapelessness.

The saving graces of the album are the tune-driven ambient of ‘Shiver Through’, a ‘gazey little number with the sweet, soft message “You send shivers down my spine”; and the frankly excellent ‘980c’, which is the most coherent thing here, subtly incorporating their various styles and skills into a whirlwind of sound and a catchy if bloodless refrain of “Keep living – on and on and on”.

This, then, is a record unsteady on its feet, the fucked-up guy at your party who may waffle and even bore you some of the time but can, very occasionally, have a flash of bright inspiration – just enough to make you feel it’s worth inviting him back next time.