You can be fairly confident you’re not in for a straightforward ride from a couple of fellows called ZaMaRoo and From Vapor to Water – and they duly take a bow here with a quirky set of glitchy electronica – but the names are the only really contrary side of this Japanese duo. Debut album Her Strange Dreams is otherwise perfectly accessible, a warm, fluid piece that welcomes a tinge of soul into a cold, studied genre.

Harmonious Bec‘s obvious antecedents are Four Tet’s found-sound folk and DJ Shadow’s drum-heavy sampladelica, those godfathers of cut-up ambience working their tendrils into every shuffling beat and bucolic burble, and it’s to the Bec’s credit that this feels like a gentle progression rather than just another facsimile. Her Strange Dreams is clearly not a collection of songs, more an ever-shifting selection of movements, but if it evades conventional structure it still works up enough earworm moments to make an engaging listen.

Away from the Shadows and Tets, there are elements of Penguin Café Orchestra in ‘In The Bright Oval’’s fresh morning sound and a hefty chunk of forgotten 90s trip hop scholars Attica Blues in ‘Giantland’’s faded hip hop. If all this smacks of a surfeit of good taste, ‘In The Bright Oval’ is then sillied up by some laser blasts, a lighter touch that prevents faces getting too po. There’s a similar trick on closer ‘Asahigaoka’, where impeccable jazz noodling is suddenly interrupted by a bursts of electronic squiggles, throbbing bass and, frankly, mental drums. Harmonious Bec pull out all the stops, anything to swerve relegation to background music.

Seems like anything goes – played straight, the sitar on ‘PlanetS’ grounds a nightmarish tapestry of flurried percussion and disconcerting whistles, while the quasi-anthemic piano tinkles on ‘Cryptomeria Rain’ are more Coldplay than house – but the fuzzy surface keeps the album vaguely cohesive. So Her Strange Dreams’ appeal is rather schizophrenic: good enough when drifting through the electronic wash; more arresting when it steps out with ‘Arms Girls’’ sonorous Talk Talk piano or the nimble beats and Rhodes keys of ‘Shunrai’. Balance is the key and, as their name suggests, Harmonious Bec by and large achieve it.