Nice Nice are not kind. They actually want to kick your ass…sonically. Please throw away your $5 earbuds and put this record on your home theater or experience it through some studio monitors because you will not be able to relax while Jason Buehler and Mark Shirazi assault your aural cavities.

Extra Wow, the duo’s first LP for Warp Records (also home to Grizzly Bear, Battles, and the Born Ruffians), is an emotional exploration in what sound can do to a human’s physical state of being. While the album immediately grabs a hold and doesn’t let go for the next 51 minutes, the true beauty of Extra Wow is the way the duo have thoughtfully sequenced the tracks. While any of the albums 13 songs could stand alone, they are arranged in a fashion that fully exploits each track’s unique texture. From the moment the first sounds escapes the speakers, your body has no choice but to surrender.

Try not being completely engaged by the time the album’s pulsating opener “Set and Setting” segues perfectly into the brutal guitar assault of it’s first single, “One Hit.” If you’re not breathing harder or head banging, then check your pulse.

The combination precision loops and ambient chant on “A Way We Glow” is enough to induce an epileptic seizure. (In a good way) On “Big Bounce,” Nice Nice program big drums on top of a carefully looped melody that creates the feeling of living in a nursery rhyme on acid. The sonic landscape Nice Nice create on this album is better than anything that could be put on film or canvas.

Still, for all the programming and computerized noises, one of the set’s standout tracks, “See Waves,” starts out with the organic sound of hand claps. The claps quickly build into huge tribal drums and a guitar line that blurs the lines of live instrumentation and the digitized. Nice Nice loosen the death grip on your mind on the albums last two tracks. “New Cascade.” The track is saturated with layers upon layers of plucked instruments, bells, and subtle cello. It immediately recalls images of the Far East and by the time you realize that you’re lost in the tone of a pinging echo, you can finally exhale and ask yourself what the hell just happened.