Some Australians will have you believe that their country’s musical tastes, trends and output lag behind the rest of the world by a good twenty years. How apt, then, that Aussie trio Seekae’s sophomore offering, +DOME should sound so much like the future.

The collective’s first LP was warmly-received but stayed within certain boundaries. Such constraints are gone this time round, however, and the sound of +DOME suggests that the decision to add the flesh of jazz, hip-hop, acoustic and more to the backbone of electronica has paid off. There are more influences on this album than is worth keeping track of, but the meticulous and timely merging of so many different genres is what makes +DOME special.

Opener Go has an aggression that belies the atmosphere of the rest of the record, and features tense guitar layers that Thom Yorke would be proud to call his own. The following track, 3, is built round a distant Mount Kimbie-esque wobble but has soulful undertones, while Blood Bank immediately changes the scenery with choppy vocals and beats right out of the Gold Panda school of electronica. Each of the first three tracks exist in their own right, and any would be a worthy lead single.

Reset Heads is the record’s most atmospheric track, and begins the welcome lull in the LP’s middle section, gliding along in a haze of minimal electronics, before Mingus provides listeners with a more familiar Seekae sound. Inevitably for an album with such an amalgamation of sounds and influences, there are tracks which don’t quite get it right. Gnor is intriguing, but its funk loses focus towards the end, and Yodal is an ungainly, jittering example of experimentation gone wrong.

These blotches matter little by the end, as the title track and acoustic falsetto ballad You’ll ensure the album finishes as impressively as it starts. +DOME grows stronger with every listen, and its creators should be applauded for attempting such an ambitious record – and lauded for succeeding in pulling it off.

-Alex King-