Super Furry Animals - 'Phantom Phorce' (Columbia) Release Date 21/07/04

A long awaited gap since ‘Rings Around the World’ in 2001 – SFA returned with ‘Phantom Power’ in the summer of 2003, a back to basics album and much less sophisticated than the previous ‘Rings. Now the band have taken the latest album, along with the simplistic ideas and put it through the remix mill. It seems that the angle taken for this album was not ‘re-wire and rearrange’ but to ‘rewire and regenerate’ – or more simply, to make it better than the original. The album begins with an introduction from Kurt Stern (executive producer of ‘Phantom Power’.

‘Hello sunshine’ is driven with bright ambience and smothered in dreamy atmospherics, whereas ‘Sex, War and Robots’ sounds scarily like the beginning of, er, a Kosheen track, then all of a sudden transforms into an Aphex Twin love child.

In between tracks throughout the album, Kurt explains the development of the album and even implies the band didn’t recall recording ‘Father Father’ "…when I played the track there was just blank expressions throughout the control room." Which is amusing to say the least. Either they were off their cakes on god knows what drugs, or Kurt dissected the song so much, the original was unrecognisable. ‘Bleed forever’ is a track, as backed up by Kurt; they tried to capture the Beach Boy’s style of vocal, in which they humbly achieve.

For the full 28 tracks on the album (including commentary) with repeated listen, you discover hidden depths and delights. Phantom Phorce is an extension of Phantom Power, a tender but harder hitting dabble in off-beat techno – For the die hard Furry fans, this album has a well deserved reservation. However, it is open to appeal to almost anyone with the patience to sit down and listen to the genius evolution from vision to audio.