Battle Elf’s newest three-track odyssey X is a spacious paean to patient, free-form music. There’s not a lot to hold onto in any of the three 7+ minute tracks, with instrumentation rarely settling into any kind of a pattern. The group elides jazz’s chaotic impulses, instead settling into more trance-like improvisation. Drum fills skitter at random intervals, guitar tones trickle tentatively in and out, chords swell rather than progress. It’s music equally divorced from jazz as it is from rock, but what else to you call it? Post-rock, I guess?

The unhurried nature of the compositions provides Battle Elf with a sophistication many post-rock groups fail to achieve. Rather than chasing catharsis, the movements on X sit in their discomfort until they find a sustainable stasis. The tempos and dynamics remain relatively stable throughout, offering a drone-like experience despite the fact that there are tempos and patterns and noticeable elements that emerge and dissipate.

Each song is presented as a blank canvas. There are no vocals on the EP, and each song is titled merely using the letter X as a numeral: “X,” “XX,” “XXX.” The third and final chapter brings a tad more character over the course of its sixteen minutes, with an actual drum groove in places and more assertive playing in general. But Battle Elf never seems intent on capturing attention as influencing it, much like a score to a film. Lynchian in its finest moments, Battle Elf’s X could be the soundtrack to many an unsettling encounter. It’s a brand of music that could both accompany and is in itself is a confrontation with the uncanny.