Stilluppsteypa have always been the kind of band that makes you wonder if they’re secretly feeding on static, schnapps, and dada poetry rather than air and food. With "Schokolino Choco Loco", their new LP on Futura Resistenza, the Icelandic duo - Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson and Helgi Thorsson - continue to prove that absurdity, when treated with care, can be one of the most tender forms of art.

Formed in the early ’90s as a larger punk-infected unit before trimming down and dissolving into abstraction, Stilluppsteypa have made a career out of turning non-sequiturs into full-blown universes. Their catalogue reads like a parallel history of electronic music: a playful detour where Mille Plateaux austerity was swapped for pranks, stories, and sonic collages that feel like dreams narrated by your weird uncle after two glasses of brennivín. Collaborations with Benny Nilsen or Melt-Banana only added fuel to the fire, creating an oeuvre where experimentalism was always laced with humour and a strangely gentle kind of humanity.

On "Schokolino Choco Loco", that ethos remains intact, even sharpened. Recorded over several years and lovingly assembled, the album feels like eavesdropping on pirate radio run by friendly aliens who learned English by mishearing pop songs in a Reykjavík laundromat. Titles like "hot and steamy sweatpants" or "farmer had a farm song (crazy dog lady)" point toward comedy, but the sounds themselves are often delicate, even moving. It’s this tension between silliness and sensitivity that makes the album so compelling: you chuckle, then suddenly you’re blindsided by a wave of melancholy.

Side A begins with fractured sketches ("downtown club owner", "no need to thank meme"), pieces that feel like found tape experiments spliced with private jokes. Yet amid the dada collage, "look what the dog bought in" stretches out to eight minutes of woozy drift, somewhere between hypnosis and lullaby, as if the dog in question dragged home not a bone but a whole philosophy of sound.

Side B, meanwhile, leans even more into surreal whimsy. "shakin cat stevens" is as deranged as its title suggests, while "ukulele house of worship aka casino place" manages to fuse devotion and kitsch in a way that feels both irreverent and oddly sincere. The closing "unexpected money transfer" is pure Stilluppsteypa: part joke, part atmosphere, part moment of real emotional resonance. It’s as though they’re reminding us that accidents - musical or financial - can sometimes be gifts.

What sets Stilluppsteypa apart, and what "Schokolino Choco Loco" reaffirms, is their refusal to treat experimental music as a grim, serious task. For them, abstraction is a playground, chaos a kind of natural law to be embraced, and humour a way of keeping the heart open. In a musical world that often mistakes severity for depth, they offer a different model: that laughter and warmth can be just as radical as noise and theory.

So yes, this record is loco. It’s also choco - sweet in its absurdity, melting into your ears with a richness that is both ridiculous and disarmingly sincere. Drop the needle, and let the Icelanders guide you through their cracked funhouse. You may not understand everything, but you’ll come out smiling, a little dizzy, and maybe - just maybe - a kinder human being.