Mountains is the sound of two men – their names are Brendon and Koen, but really that’s inessential information – finding a certain cerebral synchronicity and manifesting music that exists at the fringes of what’s classified as commercially viable, while simultaneously evoking the same sort of emotional experience one might feel while wrapped tight in the undulating anti-rhythms of peak-period Brian Eno.

In short: ‘Choral’ is an album to feel, not to sing along to. You can’t hum its melodies, you can’t strum its chords. You sit, and you sink, and you let it rise up around you.

This is the duo’s third album, and first for Thrill Jockey, and it’s easy to hear why the celebrated Chicago label was so wowed by what they heard whenever the deal was inked. There’s something of a precedent set by these preceding releases, I’m sure, but without having them available to hear any context drawn from progression can only be assumed, conveyed via the idea that all artists look to better themselves from one release to the next, across all mediums, forms, formats, et cetera. The wow factor comes not from the catalogue but from the current, the contemporary; the here and the now and what ‘Choral’ does to the senses while the body rests.

It sparks the synapses, tiny pulses running the listener’s length and breadth as all the while sweeps of starry sound drift from left to right, right to left; between, spaces are explored that would usually sit silent, so at no moment is ‘Choral’ stationary, however steady its subtle movements, its gentle shuffle towards a blinding light at the end of a tunnel made exclusively of tangible noise. Guitars are heard in the mix, but the pickings are merely stars twinkling against an absorbing sea of blackness – essential in the corners, the field of otherworldly vision; but only a tiny aspect of a greater design, one which stretches with boundless ambition while maintaining an envious elegance.

If the above seems very… abstract… that’s because Mountains – like Stars Of The Lid, Fennesz and Hammock – are an act that plays on subjective reactions: no one listener will have the experience of another while ‘Choral’ plays out. Emotions are too complex, neurons too individual, for this to have a catch-all construction, a pre-fabricated pull that attracts all comers. So to present a critique of ‘Choral’ is to offer oneself up for criticism, too – I like this, a lot. I may even love it in time. You, you may deem it utterly purposeless dirge without discernable structure or evident talent enough to hold a candle to the worst, lowest-denominator chart dross. You may want to suggest I am without an ear for music, and that I pack this reviewing game in for something more suitable. Serving burgers, perhaps.

But then again you might also be the kind of person who finds BBC Three programming cutting edge and The Daily Mail an essential guide to today’s youth culture.