Das Koolies – DK.01 review

Four fifths. Eighty percent. Express it how you want, but even elementary maths says that none of this adds up to a whole. With the Super Furry Animals on long term hiatus and Gruff Rhys releasing solo albums, what happens to the rest of these Welsh national treasures in the meantime?

Answer: make a record. Das Koolies are the rest of the Furries – Huw Bunford, Cian Ciarán, Dafydd Ieuan and Guto Pryce – but wisely on DK.01 they’ve swerved the perhaps easy option of making some grown up guitar rock and then waiting for their main band’s audience to come to them. Instead, they’ve reached further back into all their pasts.

Despite first coming to prominence during the Britpop era with 1996’s Fuzzy Logic, the group have often flirted with techno and electronica in the past and DK.01 sees them exploring it’s potential to the fullest. A double album’s worth of intricate and absorbing soundscapes, it veers amongst other things between inspired synth pop (Out of This World), lush IDM (A Ride) and Balearic rave ups (Sorry, I’m Not Sorry). They may not be all of the Super Furry Animals, but on DK.01 Das Koolies are one hundred percent going to make you dance.

You can read a full review here.