Fields, waves and a bizarre pulling sensation from the bottom of my stomach. Am I seasick or is this disc getting the best of me? What does it matter? I'm liking it.

This is one of the first bands I've ever heard to combine soundscapes and melody in a way that really works. The songs are very clearly structured, but there's stuff going on here that's completely insane. For instance, on "Jalap," the album's standout, you've got very ethnic-sounding background vocal loops layered with some form of unidentified percussion, walls of dense, oozing sound among weird lyrics, guitars and cameos by people like Portishead's Beth Gibbons. Feeling freaky yet? You will be.

The tracks are pretty long, but lack the pretension and self-indulgence of other endless drones. And above all other things, Fields and Waves goes out of its way to do something with music that is truly a forgotten art: making it interesting for the listener.

-Ryan Schreiber