Sorry! We Did Something Wrong

Tel Aviv duo Simple Symmetry — the partnership of Bela Aggelton and Meir Shitrit, now based in Berlin — have spent the past few years carving out a corner of electronic music where house, psychedelia and deadpan surrealist humour happily coexist. Sorry! We Did Something Wrong is their new full-length: an eleven-track sprawl on their own New Ears label that ropes in an unlikely guest cast — ex-Sepultura drummer Iggor Cavalera, art-pop maverick C.A.R., Greek producer XEN and Brazilian percussionist Abrão — without ever losing its sense of play.

The record opens in signature style. End of Days begins as a winking pastiche of apocalyptic disco — dramatic pads, a rubbery bassline, a deadpan spoken-word sample — before settling into a gloriously wonky four-to-the-floor groove. Out of Body Experience pushes further out, its clattering percussion and detuned synth stabs sounding like house music beamed in from a parallel dimension. The production is deceptively tidy: everything sits where it should, yet the arrangements keep lurching off at strange angles, and that tension between polish and chaos is the album’s central pleasure.

The guest cast only deepens the weirdness. Oh Lord brings in Abramov and Iggor Cavalera, whose metal pedigree emerges not as aggression but as a heavy, tribal drum figure that anchors the track whilst spectral pads drift overhead — one of the album’s most muscular moments. Brazilian percussionist Abrão lends Sim Sim Sim a warm, samba-inflected shuffle that cuts through the fog like sunshine, while Russian collective Группа Ветерок turn Octopus into a carnival of chiming folk melodies and off-kilter rhythms, the oddest and most charming detour on the record.

Elsewhere the duo’s fondness for brevity keeps things from dragging. The ‘Yes’ Tune and closer Rounded With a Sleep are throwaway interludes in the best sense, while Koko the Gorilla — named for the famous signing ape — is a compact slice of hypnagogic disco. C.A.R. and Lord Fascinator bring a stroppier, post-punk energy to I Must Not Fear, and XEN’s squelchy contribution on What a Relief! provides a heads-down techno-disco climax.

Sorry! We Did Something Wrong is the sound of artists enjoying themselves enormously, and it’s infectious. Nothing here takes itself too seriously — the title makes that plain — but the craft behind the silliness is real: tight drums, rich pads and a studio-as-playground approach that never tips into sloppiness. It won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but for those who like their house music with a wink, this is a genuine delight.