The fourth album by London neo-psych group Vanishing Twin is their first as a trio after the departure of multi-instrumentalist/samplenaut Phil M.F.U., but the stylistic shift of Afternoon X owes to more than just the paring down of personnel. Singer Cathy Lucas, drummer Valentina Magaletti, and bassist Susumu Mukai have collectively consolidated their ideas while shucking off the primary roles those instruments typically gave them. That’s led to an approach that can trick you into thinking they’ve scaled back, though it’s more the case that they leaned a bit further into the unknown. Some of the most prominent cuts here are minimal and terse, and yet more mysterious and haunting and hypnotic for it. The zero-gravity hiccups and scattered chimes of transmutation-themed opener “Melty” seem to be there mostly to serve Lucas’s thrumming voice and its koans to impermanence, and the band’s sense of expectation-dashing timing and mood-shifting unpredictability adds some playful disorientation to the chirpy water-drip Morse code bossa melodicism of “Brain Weather.” That feeling carries through to closer “Subito,” which alludes to a state of relaxation so deep it holds the promise of death and rebirth inside it, with a refrain of “what are we waiting for” so relaxed it just heightens the urgency of the statement itself. Playing with a long basis of post-rock/psych exotica mutations has given them a lot to work with, and the Broadcast/Stereolab kinship they’ve become known for is easy for them to extrapolate on; at this point, their hauntology of Cold War-era art pop and its ’90s pomo echoes almost feels comfortable. Which is different from complacent: they synthesize the elements of “Lotus Eater” so it’s easy to go from thinking about Alice Coltrane and Silver Apples to contemplating the infinite, cast “Marbles” as folk-funk reclaiming Stonehenge like Parliament did the pyramids, and concoct an abruptly-shifting junk-drawer suite in “The Down Below” that wanders from roiling spiritual jazz to string drones to cascading chimes and back. That cut stands out for being formless in a way that makes each of its discreet movements and moments feel startling — with Lucas’s shocked-and-awed multitracked repetition of “America” in its waning minute feel the most unsettling. Afternoon X is less accessible than their previous albums, and the leap they’re making towards something even more ambitious still feels like it’s in process — fitting enough for an album fixated on transformation and adaptation.