Mamuthones comprise some of the participants in the ancient masquerade carnivals that take place in Mamoiada, Sardinia – but then you knew that, obviously. What you may not realise is that Mamuthones is also a musical project of Alessio Gastaldello and Marco Fasolo, members of Italian psych-rock outfit Jennifer Gentle. Mamuthones is also the new LP by said project, which sees Gastaldello and Fasolo joined by drummer Maurizio Boldrin, marries together new material with a track recorded in 1974, and which will send your ears to odd places indeed.

What we have here is a 7-track, 45-minute experimental LP in the out-there, 1970s European tradition. The pieces – the term “songs” seems misplaced – vary from hushed meditation (‘The Call’) to buzzing, miminalist ambience (‘A New Start’) and a pendulous, ominous work which threatens to explode but never does (‘The First Born’). This, then, is a thinking record; it is music to drown in rather than absorb. At their most accessible, Mamuthones meander around the edges of territory explored by the likes of Virginian sludge rockers Pontiak, but the Italians lack that band’s occasional tendency for Sabbath-like straightforwardness.

By contrast, this is a bleak, dark journey into the unknown. On ‘Ota Benga’, the music’s combination with frantic whispers and subdued wails, leading into an abrupt silence, brings to mind the grotesque Italian horror cinema of Dario Argento. While fellow Italians Calibro 35 cover and channel the music of 1970s Italian crime flicks, it is the rich vein of ’70s Euro-horror which Mamuthones seem somehow connected to. As you might expect, the album that results is something of an uninviting, disturbing and disorienting one, but not one bereft of spine-tingling charms.