First of all, there will be no listless comparisons made with other well-known Irish instrumental acts. The Jimmy Cake is a stand-alone band in Irish music. Few come close in their capacity to evoke, or in balls. This statement is corroborated by the release of the band’s latest album ‘Master’, a sixty eight minute record comprised of three vast, rousing tracks.

In this record, what impresses is the ability to keep it dramatic. The Jimmy Cake has succeeded in creating a lush sound-scape, thronged with pulsating drums and a thousand shiny synthesizers and guitars. There is a constant momentum, a perpetual pulse to the music that is urgent and always sweeping the listener on to new places. It really is exciting to listen to this record. There is a jungle of noise to swing through. Look, there are Fuck Buttons having a deranged tea party beneath some ivy. Over there we can see Gary Numan swinging from some sort of metallic baboon tail. One can see many unusual and intriguing influences and nuances in the sea of sound that is proffered by this album. Really, this is an achingly beautiful record.

Death Can Fuck Off builds and breaks with foreboding. It is thirty two minutes of ebb and flow, of journeying through some sort of glittery space-time continuum. This first composition is a hopeful labyrinth of phasers and lasers and syncopated lunacy. It all evokes the image of some bandy-legged insect wandering a Boschean landscape, hitting pots and gongs and korg synthesizers as it moves along. There is a real madness to the music, a delightful madness. At no point does the music seem in danger of becoming background noise, as a thirty two minute track could well do. It truly is a gorgeous composition. While one might sit back and listen to an Arvo Part record and picture the sea or a far off horizon, here we are on a rollercoaster through space. We listen not to unwind, but to be breathless and dazed.

Observatory Destroyer is more of the same, more thrashy perhaps, more mischievous. If we are sailing through space in track one, now we are being torn asunder by a black hole. Whereas the band’s last release, ‘Spectre & Crown’ all the way back in 2008, was minimal and haunting, now The Jimmy Cake have set forward a brash, thunderous offering. The contrast could be equated to the difference between Sigur Ros’ ‘Valtari’ and ‘Brennisteinn’ albums.

Teen Mist comes in with unexpected bluesy undertones, albeit whitewashed with the space-warp sounds that we have become acquainted with. The familiar plodding piano of earlier releases makes a comeback too. A vocal rises up from the clacking musical brume, fades away again, and the album is over. And we are left having listened to, well, what?

Much of ‘Master’ rings of a Michael Gira (of Swans fame) composition: heavy, unapologetic in its long, stomping reprisal of a few gritty notes. A Trent Reznor mention is inevitable, though a Joy Division comparison might be more apt for mood. Whatever the comparisons one might settle on, undoubtedly The Jimmy Cake’s latest offering can be deemed a welcome return from the Dublin group after a too-long absence, and one of the best Irish albums of the year.

The Jimmy Cake set to release the record on the 28^th of August in Hangar, Dublin.