Hype Williams have always done their best to keep their intentions as opaque as their music. In true post-modern fashion, they challenge you to both take them seriously (But how could you, when we’ve named three of our songs after the same George Michael track, and just sampled the first thing we found on YouTube and slapped it over this crappy drum loop?) and to dismiss them as pranksters (But listen to the beautiful, oozing bass, and hear how the apparent cheapness of the production makes this synth melody more haunting.)

One of the biggest question marks has been over the identity of Hype Williams’ members, with strong suggestions that music released after 2011’s ‘One Nation’ album hasn’t in fact been the work of Dean Blunt and Inga Copeland at all. The brief press statement, issued “4 the sake of clarityn” (sic) reinforces this: “any Hype Williams releases you’ve heard since are FAKE… we been gone for a minute, but now we’re back with the jump off.”

So maybe this album is the work Blunt and Copeland, but I couldn’t tell you for sure. Their various respective solo projects have peeled off in different and increasingly rewarding directions so it’s strange in a way to find them getting the ol’ band back together, if that is indeed what we’re looking at. As with a post-reformation Pixies release, Rainbow Edition’s is kind of the sound you remember, it’s just the strokes are a little broader and neater. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing – the chunky synth rock of ‘Loud Challenge’ gleams unapologetically (there’s a higher ratio of gloss to hiss than in the past) and ‘Spinderella’s Dream’ demonstrates they haven’t lost their knack for establishing an obliquely affecting mood - but Rainbow Edition feels more like a jumping in point for new listeners than a jump off in a new direction. Perhaps that’s even what was intended.