Lovers of intelligent downtempo, rejoice. Third Ear Audio is a weighty collaboration between Nick Doof and Celli Firmi, and it’s fucking magnificent.

Third Ear Audio owes little to Shpongle. It’s dubby, with trance elements and drifting BPMs that make it sound less like an album based on a particular sound, and more like a series of themes and sounds based on the idea of an album.

Third Ear Audio’s music is better than my sentences. The album coasts through three (or possible more) flavours. It kicks off with what one might call ‘top-drawer chill’, with Ethereality’s warm and spacious hammock soundtrack, and Just A Moment with its echoes to finer Abakus and Tripswitch recordings.

Things then get very dubby. Freak of Nature stands proud as a solid example of what these boys do right – quality production, imaginative elements, and progression that’s always organic and never forced. Up In Smoke and Jamaican Robot pepper comedy on top, which is always a winner round these parts.  

The Sleeping Giant takes on a smooth, understated 4/4. If you’re a fan of Doof’s later output – which is still bloody old, but you know what I mean – then you’ll like his laid-back approach to beats and this continues the trend.

The highpoint is probably Final Front Ear, which brings in elements from various styles, and packages them all up into something completely fresh, and also completely wonderful. I can’t help thinking that Third Ear Audio has beaten Younger Brother to the summit of some sort of mad mountain of mad good music – it is at once more refreshing, more emotive, and more significant. Tops.

Deep Blue sounds like a contender for an old Blue Room compilation that gives way to some wonderful melodies, and closing track The End brings it all back around to full circle, making you instantly want to listen to the whole thing again.

I must admit I was pleasantly surprised by this. There’s a tremendous amount of depth on this album. And when that’s coupled with a tremendous amount of soul, inventiveness, production quality, variation and sheer chumminess, it’s fast approaching that watermark above which something is called Essential.