To understand Major Organ and the Adding Machine, you have to understand the concept behind the all-seeing, all-knowing American power troupe that is Elephant 6. Now based in Athens, Georgia, the group was founded by childhood friends Rob Schneider, Bill Doss, Will Hart and Jeff Mangum. Since the collective’s inception in 1991 the four have formed some of the most influential experimental-pop bands of our time, including Apples in Stereo, Dressy Bessy, Neutral Milk Hotel and Of Montreal. While Major Organ and the Adding Machine’s line-up has never been confirmed, many suspect it’s the work of Magnum, Hart, The Music Tapes’ Julian Koster, The Olivia Tremor Control’s Eric Harris, Of Montreal’s Kevin Barnes and Elf Power’s Andrew Reiger.

Their self-titled album certainly suggests so – it’s packed with the musicians’ trademark penchant for the bizarre and down right mental. Originally released in 2001, the record mainly consists of garbled fuzz, childlike chanting, nonsensical announcements (sometimes sung in French) and outtakes that sound as though they were recorded backwards and underneath the sea. It’s bafflingly wonderful and poignantly original.

Not all is lost to interlude. From the layered chaos emerge melodic gems like ‘His Mister’s Pet Whistles’ and ‘Madam Truffle’ – they’re sublimely constructed pop songs, but they’ve been melted and distorted into a riddled static. This is a collage of sound rather than music in its traditional form, and Major Organ is the delirious and genius conductor.

If you think the CD is strangely hypnotic, wait until you set your eyes on the contents of the accompanying DVD. Opening with a waving lobster, the film quickly moves through the subtitles to reveal a gigantic (and recurring) moustache which envelopes the screen. No, I’ve not lost control of my senses; that is genuinely what happens during the opening credits. It’s like a new-wave art film recorded by confused aliens, and there’s more to come.

The episode that follows unravels to reveal our foul assumption: the previously reviewed album is not an album at all, but a soundtrack released nine years before its film came to fruition. Major Organ and the Adding Machine make good use of the layers of sound they hold in their possession by putting them to a story board. It remains complex and baffling, but at the same time the intricate detail and strange sense of completion is engulfing.

However, take a closer look and the premise of the film is as gloweringly irrational as the record. Elephant 6, cunningly disguised as a group of ‘Old Folkes’, play a variety of instruments, knit and watch a reality TV show, which involves that same waving lobster and a scuba diving presenter. Soon, the dreaded moustache makes an unwelcome return to introduce two children, who have appeared in the kitchen of a particularly large baking lady know as Madam Truffle. The film continues its hypnotic tale, all the while making sense of something that previously seemed to make no sense at all.

It’s knickerbockerglory, throw your socks in the air, declare yourself a Mormon and make a den out of pillows mental, but it’s overpowering. Major Organ and the Adding Machine unabashedly throw an unorthodox mass of noise at their audience, but they create experimental music at its purest, and for that alone the band deserves some credit. The album may be unusually unconventional and thus a little hard to stomach, but without Major Organ et al there would be no progression in music at all. These are the men and women that challenge perceptions and push boundaries, and this record embodies their hardest efforts. It’s illogical, it’s difficult, but because of that it’s magnificent.