MATT JENCIK & MIDWIFE

Eventually, most people arrive at the point where they can't listen to skull-crushing, brutal death metal or coruscating, nihilistic sludge all the time. The occasional break is permissible. Matt Jencik has made a quiet but telling name for himself via such underground legends as math rock mavens DON CABALLERO and, more recently, noisy psych rockers IMPLODES, both of whom pushed the boundaries of what's possible with loud guitars. "Never Die" is a very different kettle of ambience. A collaboration with MIDWIFE (a.k.a Madeline Elizabeth Johnston),who has released countless intriguing projects over recent years, this is an exercise in restraint, repetition and the art of saying a lot with very little.

With vocals from both protagonists, "Never Say Die" conjures songs like unfamiliar voices resonating in the head. Primarily drum-less and swathed in perpetual fuzz, these are simple mantras, unfussily played. There is a strong spiritual core of effervescent shoegaze that bubbles through the majority of these tunes, with "Flower Dragon" and "Don't Protest (Too Much)" waxing and waning like relics from the early '90s, replete with MY BLOODY VALENTINE-like vocals that drift past like half-forgotten remnants of thought.

The duo have a refined grasp of how to best blur the boundaries between distant genres, too. "The Last Night" is dreamily psychedelic, but rooted in the bleak, industrial soundscapes of early synth-pop, with Jencik's sober voiceover contrasting with Johnston's glassy-eyed, angelic chorus with mesmerizing effect. "Bend" is a wild and wayward Krautrock abstraction, disembodied voices lost in a whirring, overdriven soup of sound. The title track rumbles and fizzes, waltzing through abandoned ballrooms, haunted by undulant drones. "Only Death Is Real" weaves treacly vocal harmonies through an amorphous squall, underpinned by weird, oscillating machinery. It is all deeply unsettling, but strangely beautiful. "Organ Delay" is a sumptuous tsunami of synths that aches with melancholy; the brilliantly titled "September Goths" is gorgeously crestfallen, cinematic space-pop; and the closing "Rickety Ride" is the big finish, an anesthetized "Purple Rain" for the eternally bewildered.

This is the perfect, soft-focus brain rinse. MATT JENCIK & MIDWIFE have achieved something magical and quietly original with their first collaboration. "Never Die" deserves to be the first of many such flights of fuzzy fancy.