As the follow up to 2010’s Escape, Mazes cements Moon Duo’s status as the lighter, more flexible sister to the heavily-laden Wooden Shjips. While the concept is the same – minimalist rhythmic repetition matched with improvised guitar, the result is more lucid, stripping down the denser elements of Wooden Shjips and replacing them with drum machines and synths. Where Escape’s lengthy tracks teetered into sustained drone rock, Mazes is more progressive. Eight short tracks are built around a clear melodic structure, most noticeable on the finger-clicking pop jam ‘When You Cut’, where Johnson’s usually ethereal vocal adopts an Alan Vega-esque swagger.

In spite of this, Moon Duo stay true to form and this is still at its core hypnotic psych-rock. Mazes takes you on a psychedelic trip through intertwining rocky mountains and the entangled California highways of the couples’ native landscape; the repetitive riffs acting as solid borders through which fluid synths and drifting guitars weave, lost amid Johnson’s acid-drenched vocals.

Yamada comes to her own straight from opener ‘Seer’, with a back catalogue of space-age electronics, which also form the crux of ‘Scars’. It’s a welcome deviation from the walls of reverb, invoking both the electro-minimalism of Suicide and 60s primitive synths of Silver Apples. Where ‘Mazes’ takes on the rock n’ roll sensibilities of the latter, ‘Run Around’ adopts wider influences; its giddy hedonism reminiscent of Raw Power Stooges.

Much like Wooden Shjips, there’s little in Moon Duo’s second album that will appeal to fans outside that wizened church of the psych rock devout. But for fans of the genre, there’s plenty to worship here. Slaves to the interminable riff be prepared; Moon Duo’s train of illusory percussion, acid synths and trance-inducing guitars is at the station, and there’s no return journey.