The Condemned

Credit: Performer, Programmer, Co-produced

A past fades out for a future to begin as the long-running, secretive DAS KOOLIES ‘dream project’’, emanating from Cardiff’s post-industrial docklands, delivers its first consignment of complex, wired euphoria: The Condemned. Chains of decayed connection and shackles of genre-expectation are audibly broken as Huw Bunford, Cian Ciarán, Dafydd Ieuan and Guto Pryce restore original Furry vision with techno-inspired, heavy-tech sound inspired by illegal rave roots, re-routing their paths as notorious scientists of sound, taking the outside lane to arrive close to where it all began for Super Furry Animals.

Das Koolies emerge to explode three decades of digression as Super Furry Animals with the electronic depth-charge debut EP: The Condemned.

Soldering human touch to synths and samplers, Das Koolies come through on their manifesto pledge of incinerating acoustic guitars while unsafely loading as much noise-making machinery onto their studio mains supply as possible. The Condemned, a confrontational, synth-driven outsider anti-anthem comes through as a warm-blood-on-cold-steel rope act of strict automation and humanity, commanding computers and code to find compromise with Ieuan and Bunford’s vocals.

The Condemned is the first single and title track to be released from an upcoming four-song EP, released on digital and limited 12” vinyl formats on Fri 10 March 2023.

Updated and backdated, Das Koolies’ genesis lies in the nineties, half-a-decade between chapters and subject of rumour ever since. Super Furry Animals’ first gig, in Bangor in 1993, was a 30-second, chemically- and technologically-compromised flash of light, a set of techno-indebted electronica curtailed that could have altered history’s course. Onwards to Real World studios in 1998 and the recording of the classic, semi-experimental Furries’ album, Guerrilla and Das Koolies reconvene between World Cup goals and label meetings to go off-piste and quietly resuscitate their ideals of the early-90’s.

The band was then boxed and stored safely for reanimation.

Finding that the through-road was a diversion, Das Koolies’ 2023 reformation, return to the studio and schedule of releases establishes a democratic artistic state, setting free ministries of music, performance and visual art in line with the members’ original vision. The Condemned and all tracks from the forthcoming EP were produced by Das Koolies and mixed in collaboration with Chris Shaw (Public Enemy, A Tribe Called Quest, Run-DMC).

In a brief statement, Das Koolies say: “Everything for a reason and a reason for everything. A beginning catalysed by the past. Of machines and of man. Let the beat now lead the way.”