On this album the challenge takes the form of Themselves and German glitchpop band The Notwist trying to combine their musical approachs without the result sounding like a compromise. Unfortunately, whilst the results are always atmospheric, often pretty and sometimes startling, the alliance is not a particularly assured one, and you can often feel the rough edges of tracks created after only a day or so in the studio. Tellingly, it is the tracks that might have been created by one of the groups on their own that hit hardest; The Notwist’s voices shining on the warmly throbbing Men Of Station and menacing intimacy of Perfect Speed, and Themselves all taking to the mic for the wonderful Soft Atlas, a sing-song concept track wrapped in Dose One’s murmuring.

   Other tracks straddle the divide unhappily; although not bad, they seem lacking in definition either instrumentally or lyrically (strung out over the seven minutes of Superman On Ice, Dose One seems more a lost wanderer than the track’s focus). As a result, what might have been a genre-bending explosion ends up an occasionally delightful curiosity that never fulfils its potential for more than a track at a time. It would have been lazily easy to predict that if you loved Dose One or The Notwist, you’d love this album; but the truth is you’ll probably just like it at best.