his record is diseased. If you breathe a few seconds of it, you might get a sour aftertaste in the back of your throat, soon followed by muffled hearing, saliva swallowed like snapped twigs, and a feverish delusions. OK, I’ll be fair. There is a little decency and grace here on Dead Drunk.

The record is essentially the garbage disposal scrapings of Brooklyn psych bands Black Dice and Animal Collective. The Tones are the duo of roommates Eric Copeland who doesn’t quite sing, but damn well, vocalizes for the Dice, and Dave “Avey Tare” Portner who is a time traveler from the 22nd century but often gets his Animal Collective labeled as straw-chewing “folkies” whenever he plays guitar. After exploring post-techno in Blasted, they concocted this thing that I will probably get accused of misinterpreting, but so be it. Dead Drunk came out of their Paris apartment studio last summer. I’d rather not imagine what influenced their work, as many of the songs seem to be recorded while they were coming down from a binge of some sort.

On their third album, the Tones basically combine the cartoonish psych excesses of their other bands, where they typically dump synth and guitar noises into a cauldron stirred by Copeland as he mumbles, mutters and hums to the morning sunshine. The result aims for a “shitty is pretty” messthetic that is more novelty than anything else. Hell, listening to the record is like spending a half-hour in a relative’s home that hasn’t let his dogs outside for several years—he can be a charming host but there is that nagging stench.

Opener, “Car Fumes” locks onto a carousel loop of a flute sample, while Copeland rambles like a poet squinting at a crumpled bar napkin during a 1 a.m. poetry slam. Elsewhere, analog synth noises dive to the ground like UFOs shot down by ack, ack, ack until an underwater and rather enchanting Eno-esque synth oddly saunters into the room before the song ends—making me shout, “wait, wait, wait!” “The Sailor,” which follows, is more forgivable as it could easily be mistaken for one of the Animal Collective’s more ecstatic moments. The song begins with disembodied, guttural chants, and a ringing guitar that moves like a freight train, before rhapsodizing vocals gallop in. The band later resembles Black Dice improvising to break writer’s block in “Future Train,” wherein Copeland falls into an epileptic fit in the thick of sprawling guitar noise and percussive thuds. The Tones seem to be at their best when they mediate on a few sounds.

“Plow Man” is lathered with a loop of thick distorted textures, and is mixed to resemble Fennesz thunking around in a washing machine: new notes and timbres rising to the surface with every rinse. A native American-like chant hovers above the din and gives a refreshing break away from the self-indulgence that hampers most of the album. Elsewhere, we have the tedium: our friends reenacting a beehive scene in “Gargoyle” with buzzing guitar drones and Copeland muttering in the distance like a neglected queen bee, while he grumbles like a wounded mountain lion amid wavering, Art of Noise-like synthesized vocals on “Magic Trick.” Closer, “This Weekend Wow” ends with looming cosmik synths and high squealing tones that must mean something spiritual if the lysergic poisoning is strong enough.