Back in the early 90s music was tribal – unlike today where teenagers are getting into Toto, Taylor Swift and probably Throbbing Gristle and Test Dept on Tik Tok – back then you chose your tribe and stayed in your lane – to the point it became quite striking when Indie guitar bands started to incorporate samples and beats when Acid house and Hip Hop crossed over. It became a running joke in the weekly music press to portray this cliche of former anorak-wearing 12 string guitar bands, suddenly festooned with beads and smiley-face t-shirts, adding a funky drummer beat remix to cash in on ‘Madchester’ and ‘Indie Dance’ – the meme was “there’s always been a dance element to our music”. In the case of Super Furry Animals though, that was 100% true. Right from the off they were incorporating synths, sampled beats and acid house basslines into their songs and the band were always big on raving and partying and famously purchased an armored tank – equipped with Technics decks so they could DJ at festivals spinning tunes from the likes of Hardfloor and Orbital after their live sets. Later on the band would traditionally end their sets with each member leaving the stage to keyboardist Cian Ciaran who would close the set by performing a fantastic acid techno jam as the strobes and lasers took over – confused Indie kids found themselves at rave for 10 or 20 minutes.

So the thing is, there’s always been a fantastic dance/electronic group hiding in plain sight behind SFA and I’d often thought they should make a purely electronic record based on some of those Welsh techno encores. Well – sans the singer and frontman Gruff Rhys 4/5 of SFA have now morphed into that techno supergroup – made the excellent ‘DK.01’ and are now onto their 2nd LP ‘Pando’. The music is majestic and is far from the generic bedroom electronica that pretty much anyone can do these days – it includes soaring vocal lines, guitar, bass and drums assembled into dance tracks. There are songs too – Vocally it’s hard to figure out who is singing – vocals are used more like samples, or as harmonic choral sweeps that remind me of Animal Collective. Check out ‘White Star’.

It’s a super combination and sounds like music made by 4 people who have a deep love and understanding of dance music – have spent many years DJ-ing and partying and are having a lot of fun.

With SFA on hiatus, Das Koolies have become a live act now and essentially perform as an A/V (Audio Visual) show. Their schtick is to play from behind two tall screens from which the band can just be seen peeping over – with video projections in front of them. It’s hard to see what the band are doing but Huw has a guitar, Guto has a bass, Cian is donning headphones and doing something technological and Dafydd is bashing away on some electronic drum pads. They seem to be having fun behind there and occasionally break off to acknowledge the audience, punch the air, smoke some vapes and throw some shapes.

Sonically it is glorious – full of tension and release between trouser-flapping bass and moments of pure euphoria and soaring vocal hooks. What doesn’t quite work tonight is the A/V presentation- in a late night club setting or festival tent it would be fine but in a half-full mid week Indie venue it just becomes a somewhat irksome barrier between the band and the audience. The visuals are a bit repetitive and in this context it would be better if we could watch the band – just seeing musicians play and interact with each other is far more interesting than any video presentation. Bassist Guto is wearing a crash helmet with a Noddy Holder style mirror ball effect – which we only get a brief glimpse of – which says it all.

The massive elephant in the room is the lack of live vocals – that small tweak would have completely transformed the whole performance which otherwise feels like a bit of a playback of the new record or a DJ set with a bit of live jamming over it. There’s no faulting the brilliant music, but mid-venue I’m surrounded by people looking at the football results on their phones or chatting and tapping a half-hearted toe. Granted there are some party people down the front getting a bit more into it – and only a boring knobhead would say “I could have just stayed at home and listened to the new LP on my headphones”. That said I’m playing the new record right now and enjoying it immensely.