Ah, "File Under Unpopular" - a title that reads like an inside joke, a self-fulfilling prophecy, or just a shrug toward the weird, the wonderful, and the proudly marginal. But rest assured: this archival splinter grenade from The Reference Group is anything but forgettable. It’s a psychedelic-avant-prog fusion so stubbornly idiosyncratic that you could shelve it between Captain Beefheart, Univers Zero, a high school jazz band on mushrooms, and a malfunctioning Commodore 64 - and it’d still elbow them all out of the way for attention.

The group is the resurrected chimera of drummer/composer Michael Maksymenko and bassist/multi-instrumentalist Ralf Nygård, with the stringed incantations of Jimmy Ågren (slide guitar freak wizard and Captain Beefheart disciple) and the shape-shifting riff alchemy of Mathias Danielsson, the musical shaman from outer-Stockholm. Though The Reference Group had the lifespan of a mayfly on acid - just 2007 to 2008 and a single live show to their name - they left behind eight tracks that now resurface like a myth long buried in the radioactive swamp of the avant-garde underground.

Let’s be clear: this is "not" casual listening. “It Will Resolve Itself Athematically” opens the album with a title as twisted as the track itself. It’s both a command and a warning: themes are for cowards, hooks are for pop stars. Here, we get rhythmic asymmetry, gurgling guitar grit, and drum patterns that treat meter like a dare. Maksymenko plays with the neurotic precision of a man juggling flaming hammers, while Ågren's slide guitar screeches and slithers like a chrome snake on a Moebius strip.

The record jerks and spasms between composed angularity and something that smells like improv but probably isn’t. “Leatherreport” could be a lost Beefheart b-side that got filtered through a stack of Swedish fanzines and ended up reborn as a punk-jazz sci-fi theme song. “Hash of Lungs” is just as grotesque and surreal as it sounds - somewhere between Zappa and a derailed train of thought. “Also Sprach Barista”, meanwhile, feels like a caffeinated sketch of Ligeti performed by cartoon animals in a jazz cellar.

And then there’s the instrumentation itself. Nygård’s use of a "Zanzithophone" - a MIDI wind controller meant for schoolkids who once played recorder - adds a layer of beautifully deranged whimsy. It’s like handing Sun Ra a Fisher-Price synth and telling him to soundtrack a nature documentary. The closer, “Orange Envelope”, recorded with a handheld device, is a lo-fi postcard from a dream that already forgot itself.

Somehow, amidst the chaos, there’s cohesion. This isn't random weirdness - it’s curated weirdness, intensely focused like a slapstick symphony. It’s the ghost of post-prog dressed up in dadaist drag, making you laugh, then twitch, then listen harder. Maksymenko even delivers (inaudible) lyrics via semaphore on one track - proof that this band won’t even whisper its secrets unless you know how to decode flags.

So, why "File Under Unpopular"? Maybe because categorization is futile. Maybe because it's better that way. Popularity demands compromise, and this album is allergic to it. It’s an archival release that sounds more contemporary than most of today’s experimental fare: wild, brainy, full of snarling joy and absurd sophistication.

Unpopular? Maybe. But in a world of algorithmic playlists and prefab sonic comfort food, "File Under Unpopular" is a flaming meatball lobbed into the easy-listening punch bowl. And thank the music gods for that.