Black midi introduce us to “John L” with looping, staggering chaos. The melody is somewhere between a bar from King Crimson’s Larks’ Tongues in Aspic title suite skipping on a turntable and the moment when a train starts screeching to a rhythm. Since their 2019 debut Schlagenheim, the London collective have added saxophone and violin to the mix, and the result feels even less identifiable than before. And when vocalist Geordie Greep starts muttering about accordion-backed renditions of “Sonny Boy” or crews of anteaters feasting on human flesh, he certainly doesn’t sound like a rock frontman.

And yet, the triumph of “John L” is not that these well-trained musicians continue to confound expectations: It’s that they have become so adept at their brand of dissonant, skronking, avant-prog that it actually sounds sort of anthemic. Along with the absurdist music video—like Jodorowsky’s Cats, or a Teletubby’s acid flashback—the song itself feels like a zoomed-out optical illusion, making you question what you’re witnessing at every turn: Does the tempo start speeding up halfway through or is that just the intensity of their performance? How many times did I think someone was opening a creaking door behind me when I listened on headphones? Occasionally, the band stops dead in their tracks, building tension with eerie, nagging silence. And when they return, they loom larger, just as fascinated as we are by where they’ll go next.