New music – Acid Casuals: Wa Da Da (Remastered) (Circuitry Electronic)

Posted on by
Reply

posted by Ben Hogwood, with text from the album’s press release.

The sole Acid Casuals album, Omni, a document of a carefree era of collective, anything goes creativity in Cardiff in the mid-noughties approaches its first ever vinyl pressing, reissued in remastered form by Circuitry Electronic on Fri 30 October 2026. Following the band opening their archive with the yearning harmonies of Bowl Me Over last month, Acid Casuals now reveal new visuals for Wa Da Da, a low-key cut of evocative electronica, typifying the album’s freewheeling creative approach.

Wa Da Da’s spacey bleeps, electronic pulse and murmured, intermittent vocal, expanding into a cascade of synthesised bells and beats, is a notable product of Acid Casuals’ experimentalism. While welcoming an ever-changing roll call of artists, Omni’s creation was thanks to the nucleic trio of Super Furry Animals’ Cian Ciarán, former Big Leaves bassist Kevin Tame and musician and actor Llyr Evans, coming together free of agendas to see where the combination of technology, instruments and melody might lead.

Refocusing on Wa Da Da just weeks before Omni’s overdue reissue, it comes days ahead of the band’s first ever live performance of the album at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama as part of Cardiff Music City Festival on Fri 2 October 2026. The video release also brings the band back together with visual collaborator, Bobby Klang.

“I think ‘Wa Da Da’ stemmed from listening to a Lee Scratch Perry double album, where the instrumental versions followed the singing versions. Not being able to remember if we’d played the album in full, it was played over and over until one of us remembered if a song had already been played,” says Cian Ciarán. “I miss those days. With the title meaning ‘love’, I think the track reflects this sentiment of ‘one love’.

“We must thank Greg Haver, the engineer who also recorded ‘Guacamole’ with Super Furry Animals, here too. He let me borrow his Proteus, which is the backbone of this track with all the bells and twinkles,”

Finding members between their ‘day jobs’ in music and film, with Evans notably starting in the cult classic film, Twin Town, collective’s activities stretched well beyond synth soundscapes. Acid Casuals ran an art gallery in central Cardiff, working with local artists and exploring street art, and later opened Capsule, a pizzeria, gallery and beer garden that hosted openings, listening parties and album launches. Then there was the Acid Casuals fashion line including a distinctive pair of jeans called The Scoop, designed to retain the loose shape of 1990s baggy denim without the hems being destroyed underfoot, each pair made in a small factory in Port Talbot.

Such a broad span of activities, alongside a spread of external interest including a Mixmag cover feature and landing a track on an episode of global hit US crime drama, CSI Miami, means that the story of Acid Casuals will never be one reduced to the status side project or tangential curiosity.
Originally released on Mon 30 January 2006, Omni arrived between the Super Furry Animals albums Love Kraft and Hey Venus! and has since become a singular document of the adventurous musical and creative community found within the cheaply rented studio spaces and commercial property of a pre-regeneration Welsh capital city. Pressed on coloured LP for the first time, the remastered edition is accompanied by CD and digital versions that feature additional tracks picked from the Acid Casuals archive.

Published post no.3,035 – Thursday 1 October 2026

New music – David Sylvian: The Distance Between the Killer and the Killing (Nanoq)

Posted on by
Reply

posted by Ben Hogwood, with text from the album’s press release.

The freshly minted label Nanoq is proud to announce a new album by David Sylvian. Titled The Distance Between the Killer and the Killing, it is the first album Sylvian has released in 15 years.

Comprised of sessions recorded between 2012 and 2025, the album is based on recomposed improvisational sessions with a variety of artists ranging from Otomo Yoshihide, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Bilianna Voutchkova and Miako Klein, to Jamie Drouin, Lance Austin Olson and more. The 46-minute instrumental is unlike anything tackled by Sylvian before and is seen by Sylvian himself as the official follow up to his 2009 album Manafon.

In Pauline Nadrigny’s essay on the album, she describes something of the listening experience.  “…voices surge that belong to no one in particular. One that hoots and hums across a violin, worked until it loses its voice, becomes mere matter among other matter. A voice inside the breath of a clarinet or a recorder. Grunts, gurgles, distant cries, somewhere between man and bird, woman and nuthatch. Fragments of choirs, far off, snatches of a song long since lost. Too far to be recovered.”

The Distance Between the Killer and the Killing will be released on 26 February 2027 and is available to preorder now on a variety of formats and special editions, art directed by Sylvian and designed by Chris Bigg. Alongside the standard vinyl LP and plastic-free gatefold CD, there are two limited editions: a marbled vinyl housed in a mirror-board sleeve; and a deluxe CD in case-bound book packaging.

Published post no.3,033 – Wednesday 30 September 2026

Switched On – Various Artists: Total 26 (Kompakt)

Posted on by
Reply

Reviewed by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

Having celebrated a quarter of a century of top-level electronic music, Kompakt look to the next phase with another annual round-up. With sixteen tracks primed for fans, they include reassuringly familiar names who the label followers will immediately lap up.

As the Cologne label say in their humourous press release, “It’s as sure as night follows day, one of the last truly reliable things in these uncertain times, a rock in the storm of information overload, and still one of the best things you can make from PVC.”

What’s the music like?

Typically varied and occupying slots both inside and outside of the box. Kompakt always bring fresh inventions to their compilation, which never feels like a cast-off of nearly or forgotten tracks, and is sequenced to ensure the biggest benefits are felt from listening start to finish.

To which end, DJ H0TLINE gets us off to a strong, four to the floor-based start, picked up by Orlando Voorn who brings more of a breakbeat edge to the remix of So Deep. What then works is a very satisfying variation of speeds, from the wondrous dub-heavy sounds of Jürgen Paape, with Fenja Ludwig guesting on Unter dem Himmel, to the sparse but driven techno of Robag Wruhme. Sabrah Desha is one of the collection’s biggest thrills, its bassline deserving of the biggest possible subwoofer.

The smoky Burn Attitude of Michael Mayer leaves its mark, as does an extended version of Rex The Dog’s Far Out! and an introduction to Jörg Burger’s Team 85E project courtesy of Komm Schlaf Bei Mir. Add productions from Reinhard Voigt, Sog (aka cofounder Wolfgang Voigt) and Frankey & Sandrino and you have a very strong line-up.

Does it all work?

Yes, it does – and any idea that this might be a routine exercise is dismissed very early on. Listen several times and this will become your electronic playlist of choice to round off the summer.

Is it recommended?

Fans will need no persuasion of course, but in the unlikely event that you haven’t yet dabbled in anything Kompakt, the Pop Ambient and Total compilations always act as the ideal springboard from which to plan your discoveries. This is no exception!

Listen / Buy

Published post no.3,032 – Tuesday 29 September 2026

Switched On – BUNKR: Signs EP (VLSI)

Posted on by
Reply

Reviewed by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

As James Dean, aka BUNKR, writes: “Signs is a companion piece created from the same sessions as my recent album Signals, but looking in a different direction.

Where Signals explored the mysteries, memories and hidden histories of the Surrey Hills, Signs follows those signals towards the distant glow of the city beyond.

The EP captures the pull of the metropolis: the lights, movement and endless energy of urban life viewed from afar. Built around hypnotic loops, shifting rhythms and immersive electronic textures, Signs continues the story begun with Signals: a journey through memory, place and the unseen connections between the natural and human worlds.”

What’s the music like?

If you know BUNKR, you know Dean has a high quality threshold for what he releases, and this EP is no different, presenting typically atmospheric and evocative music, with a hint of mystery and bags of widescreen colour.

From the outset Construct Collapse grips the listener with its widescreen panorama, reaching a thrilling high when the four to the floor beat drops. Cruisen presents a cooler but equally rewarding picture, before the reassuring thick drone backing Eternal Cities comes to the fore. When it cuts loose, the beat and busy synths on this track are a killer combination – and are complemented by The Distance Ate Itself, bringing us back to earth.

Does it all work?

It does – time and space are a given in BUNKR’s music, but so are melody and imagination. All are present here.

Is it recommended?

Absolutely – the ideal companion piece to the excellent LP. If you don’t have either yet, get both!

Listen / Buy

Published post no.3,031 – Monday 28 September 2026

On Record – Havergal Brian: Complete Choral Songs, Volume Two (Toccata Classics)

Posted on by
Reply

aJoyful Company of Singers / Peter Broadbent; bFinchley Children’s Music Group / Grace Rossiter with cGavin Roberts, dJohn Evanson (pianos)

Havergal Brian
Stars of the Summer Night (1905)a
Tell me, thou soul of her I love (1906)a
Rondel: In a Fairy Boat (1906)a
Fairies’ Song (1908)a
Daybreak (1910)a
A Child’s Prayer (1914)bd
If I had but two little wings (1914)bd
Little White Lily (1914)bd
Pastoral: The Shepherd (1914)a
Infant Joy (1914)a
The Lamb (1914)ac
Laughing Song (1914)ac
The Lost Doll (1914)bd
The Dream (1914)ac
The Echoing Green (1914)ac
The Moon (1914)bd
The River (1914)bd
The Mountain and the Squirrel (1914)bd
What does little birdie say? (1914)bd
He was a rat (1914)a
The Fairy Palace (1915)ac
The Phantom Wooer (1918)a
Tell me, where is fancy bred (1919)a
It was a lover and his lass (1919)a
Absence (1919)ac
Pack clouds away (1919)ac
Spring, the sweet Spring (1919)ac
Introit (1924)a
Vital Spark of Heavenly Flame (1924)a
Shall I then be spared? (1924)a
O Happiness, celestial fair (1924)a
Sweet Solitude (1924)a

Toccata Classics TOCC0680 [66’43’’]
English texts included
Producer Michael Ponder
Engineer Adaq Khan
Recorded a11 & 12 December 2021, c12 &13 March 2022 at St Jude on the Hill, Hampstead Garden Suburb, London; b26 November 2022 at St Silas, Kentish Town, London

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Toccata Classics rounds off coverage of Havergal Brian’s choral songs (aka part-songs) with a second volume that, as with its predecessor [TOCC0395], underlines the composer’s sheer versatility in a genre which occupied his thinking through almost two decades of his output.

What’s the music like?

It was with choral songs that Brian first attracted attention, settings of Henry Longfellow and James Thomson [tracks 1-3] testifying to his assurance in SATB or double-choir media when combining harmonic richness with a melodic eloquence and a rhythmic subtlety equalled by few of his contemporaries. His settings of fairy-themed verse by Bernard Weller and Gerald Cumberland [4/12], never coy in their whimsicality, show comparable ease writing for upper voices with a streamlined texture that prefigures his choral songs from the following decade.

Those months either side of the beginning of the First World War were to bring by far Brian’s largest number of choral songs – ostensibly as his means of accruing income while financially adrift in London, though the technical finesse of almost all those that survive are indicative of stylistic changes in his idiom also taking place. Much the most frequently encountered poet is William Blake [15-18, 22/23], with several settings from Songs of Innocence and Experience no less insightful or idiomatic than more familiar ones by later composers. By the same token, settings of Shakespeare and Thomas Nashe [10/11, 20] provide a distinctive take on often-set texts, whereas unison settings of Charles Kingsley, Ralph Emerson or Alfred, Lord Tennyson [21, 26/27] have a disarming if never ‘knowing’ naivety that transcends their respective texts.

Two enchanting Cumberland settings were most likely derived from an operetta for children duly abandoned, while those from such diverse authors as Matilda Betham-Edwards, Samuel Coleridge, George MacDonald, Robert Burns or Thomas Heywood [7-9, 13/14] between them tread a convincing path in terms of their suitability for amateur or professional singers. Most fascinating is a group composed during that interim between the first and second parts of the Gothic Symphony: settings of Hannah More [28-30] of a canonic and textural intricacy soon heard on a far more expansive scale, as was the fervency of totemic lines by Alexander Pope [6] and methodical treatment accorded the ‘Amen’ [5]. Settings of Thomas Lovell Beddoes [31] or Laura Richards [32], respectively lurid and sardonic, vividly round off this selection.

Does it all work?

It does, not least with the responsiveness to each song of the two choirs – Joyful Company of Singers resolutely unfazed by Brian’s demands in the ‘adult’ songs, as is Finchley Children’s Music Group in those by no means child-like songs for younger voices. Peter Broadbent and Grace Rossiter have marshalled their forces ably, while Gavin Roberts and John Evanson are not found wanting in piano parts which are often much more than accompaniments. Full texts are included, while John Pickard’s booklet note sets forth a wealth of pertinent observations.

Is it recommended?

It is, notwithstanding that the first volume is the more recommendable to those having yet to encounter this significant aspect of Brian’s output. Those who have done so should certainly acquire its follow-up album (which was recorded at the same sessions) without further delay.

Listen / Buy

You can hear excerpts from the album and explore purchase options at the Toccata Classics website. Click on the artist names for more on Grace Rossiter, Peter Broadbent, Finchley Children’s Music Group and Joyful Company of Singers. Meanwhile click on the name for the Havergal Brian Society

Published post no.3,030 – Sunday 27 September January 2026