Dancefloors of all distinctions have moved to their sounds for four decades, whether festival fields or pounded dancefloors, and now the four members of Das Koolies present a heady blend of up-front warped pop and overlapping electronica with Nuthin Sandwich – the latest incessant psych-techno-disco cut from their upcoming album, DK.01.
Also announcing THREE in-store appearances at Rough Trade shops in autumn, fans keen to lay eyes and ears on the Das Koolies phenomenon for real are set to get their chance. Tickets will be available from 10am Fri 2 June 2023 via DICE.
Turning the void into volume, Nuthin Sandwich brings forward the voices of Huw ‘Bunf’ Bunford and Daf Ieuan in a hands-high, future tent-filler, inspired by the vast open spaces, physically and culturally, found in the United States of America. Whether on film, on record or theirs and their bandmates’ – Cian Ciarán and Guto Pryce’s – own eyewitness experiences of touring and working in the US, the track hits the gas to drive to ‘a town called truth or consequence’.
Nuthin Sandwich paints an audio picture to match the views of miles and miles of ‘nuthin’ seen through open windows as they travel the long road, trying to catch up with the song’s protagonists – a shroom-munching father and son in matching tracksuits reaching a final destination of near-religious enlightenment.
Nuthin Sandwich was produced by Das Koolies and mixed in collaboration with MPG (Music Producer’s Guild) UK Music Producer of the Year 2022 Marta Salogni (Bjork, Depeche Mode).
Emerging from the band’s post-industrial Cardiff docklands studio and poker room earlier this year with scene-setting EP, The Condemned, Das Koolies revealed a band re-routed to the point they may have reached had they remained the heavily techno-influenced loose cannons that were 1993-era Super Furry Animals. Announcing that their expansive, 15-track debut album, DK.01 would be released on Fri 22 September 2023 with the firebomb single, Best Mindf*ck Yet ft. Rhys Ifans in April, compromise was swept off the agenda in just over five, anarchic minutes.
Dissolving rancour and mischief in the warm waters of festival-friendly, plugged-in punk pop, Nuthin Sandwich reveals Das Koolies to be the same keen studio technicians, composers and performers of skin-seeping songcraft as fans of Super Furry Animals and their myriad solo projects and collaborations have come to expect.
The band says of Nuthin Sandwich: “Small town America. Long roads with no changes to the view. New Mexico? Arizona? Truth or Consequence. Big country, big guns, big trucks. A first world country with parts of it stuck in the third.”
Following the short films for both The Condemned and Best Mindf*ck Yet, Das Koolies continue their campaign-long creative collaboration with Edwin Burdis/Dah Dit Dit (Arctic Monkeys, Blossoms, The Coral), cooking with the video to accompany Nuthin Sandwich, promising more output of visual intrigue still to come.
Piling on the good news, Das Koolies find the keys to their charabanc and make their first moves towards their live debut. In partnership with Rough Trade, Das Koolies will appear for the following in-store dates later this year:
- Fri 22 Sep – Rough Trade East, London
- Mon 2 Oct – Rough Trade Bristol
- Tue 3 Oct – Rough Trade Nottingham
The momentous release of DK.01 reopens the book on the four band members’ artistic relationships when they might have once feared it closed for good. The Das Koolies story weaves in and out of their four-decade partnership, starting in the fields and illegal raves of north Wales in the early-nineties. Reanimated at various points during their lives together as Super Furry Animals, including a ‘keys to the toyshop’ moment while working at Real World Studios in 1998 during breaks in recording the Furries’ semi-experimental classic, Guerrilla, the culmination of their unhurried sonic alchemy is soon, finally, to become apparent.
The album will be released in multiple physical formats, including Dinked collectors’ edition recycled coloured vinyl with bonus 7", Bandcamp and Indies recycled coloured vinyl, black recycled double vinyl, CD and digital.