Elaborately costumed, highly conceptual art-rock duo create mutated electronic pop filled with fractured rhythms and jarring sonic textures. While some bands try to write straightforward songs but can't help displaying the quirkier aspects of their personalities, go all in, making everything as weird and confusing as possible, because it makes sense to them, and they know there's someone else out there who gets it. After releasing a few cassettes and a wonderfully disjointed, splattered full-length (2016's ), additionally appearing on Adult Swim and public access television, the duo released a four-song EP titled in 2020. Easily their crispest, sharpest-sounding release yet, the EP was engineered by associate , who brings out previously unheard dynamics in the duo's sound. Lacking all of the messy interludes and half-formed experiments of their past recordings, this EP focuses on their vision of pop songwriting, which is just as heavy on convoluted rhythms and disturbing lyrics as before. A fearsome creature hobbling on an odd number of legs, "Popping Hot Balloons" is punctuated by percussive noises that sound just like the song's title. "Reds Corvette" is the centerpiece, a sinister crime caper of a psychotic, Day-Glo-clad villain with a bounty of shrunken heads stashed away in the trunk of his getaway vehicle. "Lissajous" has a deceptively innocent-sounding melody, and more so than the other songs, the vocals are modulated to the point that it requires serious concentration to try and decipher them. The enigmatic duo dare their listeners to keep up with them and figure it all out, and their most tightly focused work to date is just as bewildering as anything else they've done. ~ Paul Simpson