Forgotten Welsh music gem gets new life with first vinyl release

Amelia Jones

Two decades after its release, the sole Acid Casuals album, Omni, is finally being released to completists on vinyl, reissued in remastered form by Circuitry Electronic on  30 October.

The Cardiff collective, benefitting from the broad palette of sideline and tangential ideas of Super Furry Animals’ synth pilot, Cian Ciarán, stands tall over the canon of Welsh experimentalism as they return to celebrate the reissue with fresh visuals for the album’s magical, loved-up doo-wop closer, Bowl Me Over.

Ciarán and his Acid Casual co-pilot, Kev Tame have also announced a special, one-off performance of Omni in Cardiff as part of
Cardiff Music City Festival.

Joined by an expanded Acid Casuals family, including Kris Jenkins on percussion Rhys Edwards on synths, plus a self-playing piano, the show on Fri 2nd October 2026 at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama marks the first time the album has been performed in its entirety.

Returning on not only blue audiophile LP, but also CD and digital formats, the celebratory release brings back into circulation a singular record that has long been established as a vital, if undercelebrated chapter of Welsh music folklore.

Released on 30 January 2006, Omni arrived in the curious space between the Super Furry Animals albums, Love Kraft and Hey Venus! and came to be emblematic, amongst its informed listeners, of that same adventurous musical outlook.

Its ten tracks move freely between electronic abstraction, ambient melody, skewed pop, vocal experimentation and the kind of psychedelic songcraft that had become second nature and further developed.

New and old listeners

By reminding listeners of the time, or introducing fresh ears, to the album’s sweetly melancholic closer, Bowl Me Over, Acid Casuals offer a tempting, pop-focused lure into an album of uncompromised eclecticism.

Ciarán said: “This was written on the ferry back from Ireland on a 4am crossing.

“I’d met a girl called Niamh backstage at some festival and… she bowled me over. I wrote it on the journey back after too much whiskey and full of regret for not asking her out.Quite apt, as the song itself turned out to be quite radiant and bright just like the name.

“I was in the middle exploring the history of doo wop as well at the time. Who’d have thought it?”

A loose Cardiff community of musicians, artists and friends, Acid Casuals was born in 1994 with Ciarán, former Big Leaves bassist, Tame and musician and actor, Llyr Evans at its original centre.

Never conceived as a conventional band, both the collective’s nucleic performers and those with walk-on parts dipped in and out when time allowed. As time passed, ideas accumulated, tours and albums came and went, the Acid Casuals identity remained deliberately fluid.

Whilst Evans, who is best known for appearing alongside Rhys Ifans in Twin Town, made an immeasurable musical contribution, he also stood up to become the project’s only public face.

Vitally, at a time when publicity shyness and other musical commitments forced other members into anonymity, he stepped into the camera’s eye.

Album reviews

An album of greater merit than just its connections to one of the greatest Welsh bands of all time, Omni benefitted from its own, wholly positive critical appraisals.

Following its release and premiere at Cardiff Planetarium, The Times praised the record as “diverse and intriguing”, while Pitchfork went further, describing Ciarán and Tame’s harvest as work that could stand as “a career highlight for many of their peers.”

Kev Tame says: “Recording ‘Omni’ was the first time we’d spent more than a few days in the studio on an Acid Casuals record.

“Cian always seemed to be writing and coming up with incredible ideas and sounds, so we had all this stuff to work with and managed to pull it together in between various band tours.

:It was a real pleasure and fun record to work on which was a perfect tonic for me at the time, as I’d just lost my dad – a real labour of love record – none of us really had any ambition for it beyond getting it out there.”

For those who were there, it is a vivid document of a wider creative community that was never easily contained by band names or conventional careers focused on Cardiff in the mid-2000s.

“For listeners taking their curious first steps from the Furries into Acid Casuals, or for vinyl completists, a long missing piece of the jigsaw is about to fall into place.”

You can book tickets to see the live performance here. 

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