This certainly is an unlikely pairing; and for the most part the scepticism that such a remark implies is wholly justified. Opening track ‘Ocean’, which consists of a doubled-up vocal being wrenched in both directions of the chromatic scale over a disgraceful synth note, might pass for an exercise in atonality, but it’s hardly music.

Things improve with the next song; a discernible melody helps to carry Björk’s vocals (which are redolent of Vespertine, which is good) but the track is curtailed after only two minutes, leaving one with the impression that absolutely no effort was expended in the development of the piece; the germ of an idea was good enough. However as the album progresses, the songs not only get longer but improve in coherence. The catastrophic vocal sampling that pervades the first half of the EP gradually mollifies into a gentle hooting more reminiscent of Kate Bush than of Björk, and Longstreth’s vocal performance on ‘No Embrace’ (the penultimate track) is the first sustained achievement on the disc; the song’s structure builds on the promise of ‘When the World Comes to an End’, doesn’t tail off, and the lazy fretwork of the guitar sits well with the singer’s hazy forays into the falsetto.

The vocals are even better on the final track, ‘All We Are’, where Longstreth and Björk complement each other at last, culminating in a duet that finally endears the project to the listener. If anything, the end is where this enterprise should have started from; if this collaboration had continued in the vein of song-writing exemplified by the last tracks on their EP, they may well have produced a record that was largely listenable to.