Super Furry Animals Return With a Vast, Baffling Set of Early Rarities

New Music

Precreation Percolation rewinds to Super Furry Animals’ earliest experiments and even brings back a surprising former singer.

Written by David Harris | May 4, 2026 – 12:39 pm

When Super Furry Animals released Dark Days/Light Years in 2009, they never formally split. They just stopped making new records. After a run of gloriously odd, lovable studio albums starting with 1996’s Fuzzy Logic, the Welsh five-piece seemed to quietly step away. Gruff Rhys stayed active with solo work, including 2014’s acclaimed American Interior, but aside from a major reunion tour in 2016, the band itself went largely silent. It felt less like a finale and more like they slipped out the back door.

That changed last October. Out of nowhere, the group resurfaced with an Uncut interview, announced a 20th-anniversary reissue of Love Kraft, and mapped out the Supacabra tour across Ireland and the U.K. for May 2026. Tickets disappeared fast, and extra summer dates followed almost immediately.

So is new music finally on the way? Not yet. Instead, the band has turned to its own archive with Precreation Percolation, released May 1, a deep dive into material from its formative years.

Issued in three formats, Precreation Percolation is part origin story, part document dump. For longtime fans, there is real pleasure in hearing the group still figuring itself out in real time. For casual listeners, though, this nearly 100-minute stack of demos, curios, and half-formed ideas can feel more exhausting than revelatory.

The vinyl edition pairs the two 1995 Ankst EPs on one record: Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyndrobwllantysiliogogogochynygofod (In Space)—still holding the record for longest EP title—and Moog Droog. Neither release is essential front to back, but there are clear flashes of what made the band special. “Organ Yn Dy Geg” is all bright momentum, with Rhys hopping between Welsh and English over sunlit instrumentation in a rush of playful, almost absurd free association. “Fix Idris” lands close to classic Furries territory too, even if the band’s instinct to push every eccentric idea at once sometimes gets in the way.

The CD version adds a second disc with 22 more tracks, including “Pocket Sam,” featuring original frontman Rhys Ifans. Yes, that Rhys Ifans—the actor many still remember as Hugh Grant’s chaotic flatmate in Notting Hill. It’s a fascinating artifact and maybe the set’s most conversation-starting moment, if only because it sparks the obvious what-if: what might this band have sounded like if Ifans had stayed?

Digital buyers get nine additional tracks, mostly early-’90s cassette demos. Much of it is undeniably rough, but there’s value in hearing the sketches that would eventually become songs like “God! Show Me Magic” and “The Man Don’t Give a Fuck.” If this collection is a lot, it’s because it is. Still, it plays less like a victory lap than a throat-clearing. And after all this renewed activity, fans can be forgiven for hoping the next step is brand-new Super Furry Animals music.