Adios Al Futuro – our second offering
DISCUS94CD
This is our second album and presents more of our musical take on life. Several of the tracks were created from extended improv recordings captured during a “long weekend”, others were based on ideas from individual members.
As with our first album, the music is simply what comes out of the trio, with no thought as to genre or style. All three members contribute keyboards on various tracks.
Recorded just prior to lockdown. Rave reviews, as you can see below!
Reviews
Double review
From Audion / Ultima Thule
DAS RAD
ADIOS AL FUTURO
No, not a bunch of Teutonic radicals, Das Rad got their name (partly, I think) from Steve Dinsdale’s first electronic band named DAS, who were the precursor to Radio Massacre International, and adding the first letter of each member’s surname (which is also the first 3 letters of Radio), you end up with Das Rad: Nick Robinson (guitars, effects) probably best-known for being in the 80s Sheffield new-wave band They Must Be Russians, Martin Archer (winds, keyboards, electronics) head honcho of Discus Music, and the aforementioned Steve Dinsdale (drums, synth). Not that Das Rad bear any resemblance to DAS or Radio Massacre International. They are a bit more “rad” and unclassifiable than that! Martin and Steve had previously worked together in Orchestra Of The Upper Atmosphere, and thus some of their interaction from that project can be heard in Das Rad too. But, that said, none of the music is really what one would expect from either.
The eponymous debut CD covers a lot of ground in its twelve tracks, from the upbeat and groovy to the abstract or moody, in fact so much ground that it would be pointless to do a track by track review. Basically, the disc starts with an upbeat number that kind of reminds me of that old 70s outfit Quiet Sun (with Phil Manzanera) given a lively modern update, then we go mid-tempo, atmospheric and moody, majestic, then light classical acoustic, before then getting funky with synths and sax. Track 7: Sehnsucht does much of the former all in one track, getting a little Lard Free like, it moves through upbeat and more low-key phases (the latter with reverse Frippian guitar and multi-voiced saxophone), and crams a lot into its 5:43 duration. The three most experimental tracks all end with the word “Steps” and feel improvised, all with lots of nice expressionistic noodling on guitar by Nick. In all, not a bad debut, and one with many surprises.
ADIOS AL FUTURO has a different focus, and a very live sound – actually it sounds like they’re performing in a cave, which is odd! The opening number Inside Reverse, feels a bit like the late 1980s international German based combo Dark with David Torn on guitar, but with lots of extra twiddly bits and Nick Robinson gets a tad more freaky than Torn ever did. Buzz Line is a different high flying fusion, which reminds me of someone (I just did a check), yes – it’s somewhat like Phil Manzanera circa DIAMOND HEAD, with a little bit of Tangerine Dream in the sequencer line.
Other tracks run a wider range of styles, Deuce Of Gears being more freeform experimental, and a variety of fusions, some of which I’m thinking Bruford – I could be right. There’s a very funky groove at the heart of Oslo Star, which seems to be a Terje Rypdal dedication. And then Tiefes Blau ends the disc with a 10 minute slow majestic beat and everything but the drums immersed in a crazy haze of echoes and reverb.
So, that’s two highly creative instrumental fusion albums that cover a wide variety of styles whilst gaining their own style along the way. They’ve also issued a 10″ record, which I’ve not heard and are working on a third album!
Betreutesproggen Review
Das Rad? Strewwelpeter? Titles like ‘Eisblume’ or ‘Tiefes Blau’? Just looking at the cover and the band name would lead you completely on the wrong track. Because behind the name and optical mystery hides a trio from Sheffield, England, which turns completely to the experimental and “not always easy to appreciate” tones. Nick Robinson (guitar, keyboards, electronics), Martin Archer (saxophone, keyboards, synth bass, electronics) and Steve Dinsdale (drums, keyboards, electronics) move in the border area between avant-garde, ambient, open free forms and jazz rock. It is especially the saxophone and various electronics that shape the timbre of Das Rad.
Here a certain openness is required from the listener, because you have to get involved with the sometimes quite scratchy, bulky material, even the floating, melodious sounds require time and space. An improvised sound experiment such as ‘Deuce Of Gears’ leaves behind a certain question mark, but on the other hand the band manage to create intense and quite exciting structures, such as the title song, which comes up with a Mellotron background and a lot of reverb.
In the sluggish, lazy sound cosmos, it sometimes goes in the direction of hypnotic, mystical Ambient / Space / Krautrock, in other moments electronic sound cascades find their way. Occasionally, memories of the electronic and soundscape-shaped projects by King Crimson are awakened. The stark alternative to this is the fragile ‘ice flower’ carried by beautiful melodies. In the truest sense of the word, this is progressive music in which the three instrumentalists let themselves be carried away by their ideas. Even with a certain preference for angular, unpredictable tone sequences, it is advisable to listen to “Adios Al Futuro”.
Kristian Selm
Adios review: Kulturni magazin
Wow, the Wheel is treading! Despite all the strange attributes of noise, flight, improvisation, etc. it all comes together in a hellishly shaped sense! The wheel = wheel. Martin Archer prepared it nicely for us. Perhaps he will never get involved in the publishing deeds of his Discus Music. Whether he releases unique recordings by Keith Tippett, the impro-varied multi-ensemble Orchestra of the Upper Atmosphere (Theta One to the recent Theta Five) or Das Rad, where Archer ubiquitously works with saxophones, synths with bass and keyboards. Two years after the debut of this duo, Nick Robinson’s psychedelic, thick-colored guitar really calls the saga an order of magnitude even more!
The improvisational trio from Sheffield works on an electro-freejazz basis. This is most evident in the twelve-minute introductory Inside Reverse, in which the layered / interleaved / rises / interweaves of the motif lines of various guitars (pure and broken effects) and saxophones (as well) with additional keyboards and sampled noises. Everything is hypnotically held at first by the almost imperceptible, sneering, coloring drums of Steve Dinsdale, but in the thickened instrumental gradation of the composition, they start the rhythm like a hellish machine. He will start in the subsequent Buzz Line without introductory phrases.
Which is an oak-jazz affair, where the bike steps on one riff under beautiful saxophone plays, urgent, intricately refined, it forces itself to sway in rhythm, at the same time to fly in fantasy. But you won’t have time to take off, because it will end soon and Deuce of Gears makes you think of the space between “pleasant” notes and noise. The title Adios Al Futuro is then with looped echoes of the electric piano, a chopped guitar and an ethereal baritone saxophone connecting these two musical poles previously introduced – harmonious playfulness to simple imagination versus flight in all directions into the complete noise unknown. Oslo Star then goes on a guitar hypno trip à la Fripp and Tiefes Blau closes the whole thing, in unexpected improvisational variations of instruments and chords. No template, construct, but permanent tension.
Dutch Progressive Rock Page Top 10
DPRP writer Owen Davies has chosen Adios in his Top 10 Progressive Rock Albums of 2020 – much appreciated!
Acid Dragon review (French magazine)
Das Rad is a trio comprising guitarist Nick Robinson, drummer Steve Dinsdale and Martin Archer on reeds, all three contributing keyboards and electronics. ‘Adios Al Futuro’ is an album you grow into, a shimmering, ethereal free-form expressionist music with occasional voices and enough ‘hooks’ to pull the listener in.
The sax, echoed by guitar, on ‘Rothko Strobe/ Another Place’ is especially memorable, as are the bass driven grooves on ‘Buzz Line’. My stand-out was ‘Oslo Star’ with lingering guitar notes, harp-like keyboard flourishes and jazz-like figures. ‘Tiefes Blau’ is the longest piece at 10 minutes, a satisfyingly spacey ending to an intriguing album
Phil Jackson
All About Jazz review
This UK-based band’s follow-up to its self-titled 2019 release is a tad less experimental and more grounded in progressive rock and krautrock, aptly called out in the press release. It is an acoustic-electric offering often sweetened by Martin Archer’s wistful sax lines, slightly tinged with studio echo to provide a little depth. Moreover, many of these works feature hummable melody lines and memorable hooks, although the trio does sprinkle ominous overtones amid Nick Robinson’s stinging guitar chords and razor-like lead lines.
Other than related electronic dreamscapes, the core trio grooves to many different beats with EFX which may intimate the bending of space time and other cosmic trickery. With shadowy backdrops, ostinato synth motifs and prodding pulses, they also engage the free jazz element, namely on “Deuce of Gears.” But on “Adios Al Futuro” they dish out a slow cadence with broad backwashes of electronics and Archer’s peppery sax phrasings, largely steeped in prog rock-like explorations via a wondrously coordinated arrangement.
“Eisblume” is a pretty interlude consisting of Robinson’s deft Spanish guitar work and Archer’s singing sax lines, touched with mellotron voicings. Whereas “Tiefes Blau” is the lengthiest and final track clocking in a little over 10-minutes; on this piece the musicians launch a budding theme, topped with a lovely harmonica-sounding keyboard riff. They also swerve into a spacey jazz fusion mindset with enticing harmonic applications, trickling EFX and guest bassist Aidan Hall’s booming notes and the artists’ intersecting micro-themes. Like the preponderance of the album it is an addictive piece, where gentle adaptations seamlessly coalesce with steely injections and Steve Dinsdale’s punchy pulses and crushing rock tempos. Overall, the negative if slightly playful album title bids a goodbye to the future, yet Das Rad seems to be enjoying its trek into the cosmos, searching for a habitable port of call somewhere in our solar system.
Glenn Astarita
Rythmes Croises review
First of all, Steve Dinsdale, who plays drums and sometimes keyboards in the legendary English electronic trio Radio Massacre International. Then there’s Nick Robinson, an absolute ace of guitar loops, which he brings to life, evolve and disappear at will, like a magician of sound. Finally, Martin Archer, who as an accomplished multi-instrumentalist, plays saxophone, clarinet, flute or keyboards, officiates in nothing less than Orchestra Of The Upper Atmosphere and Combat Astronomy, and who, of course, also founded the label Discus Music.
So when three musicians of this huge calibre enter the same studio, we are already certain of the stratospheric quality of the result. In fact, therefore, the DAS of Adios Al Futuro remained the same as for Das Rad. And the level of play and composition also remained the same, ie quite ruffled. This gives eight rich, dense and exciting pieces, from which stand out in particular the two major and magnificent pieces that are Inside Reverse and Tiefes Blau, which last more than ten minutes. All this is bold, refined, mastered, always excellent. Very great art, really, just like the first album.
What has changed, because obviously something has changed, is the urgency distilled in large drops in all this. Yes, we say goodbye to the future, as an echo of the “No Future” of punks, and we hurry to live while we still can, to enjoy the good time we still take before tomorrow is nothing! So DAS RAD puts even more of everything into its already fabulously rich recipe. More rhythms, more guitars, more mellotron, more of everything Itell you!
In a 1970s musical film (whose title I forget), a guitarist said to the other members of his band: “You have to play hard so you don’t hear the world fall apart.” Adios Al Futuro is a bit like that, one last frenzied dance before today falls into oblivion. But when it’s done by musicians of this level, we console ourselves with the coming apocalypse by thinking that it will be after all a demented reminder at the end of a monstrous concert!
Frédéric Gerchambeau
Progressive Aspect review
Das Rad are an improvisational collective based in Sheffield, and another band with the seemingly Sheffield-ubiquitous Martin Archer as a member. Martin, among other things, supplies keyboards and electronics to the sound, as indeed do the other two of the trio. Martin’s signature instrument is the saxophone, Nick Robinson’s the psychedelic guitar, and holding it all together are Steve Dinsdale’s anchoring rhythms. Together they take a free-rock template forged in the heat of the Krautrock furnace, and weld it to jazz and dub sensibilities, and thus create a righteously rocking and trippy whole.
Taking off with the rocket ship Inside Reverse, sparse occasional beats guide woodwind into a comets-on-fire guitar excursion from Nick Robinson, the symphonic cacophony eventually breaking down into its component parts before the engine sputters out. That first track was a loose but fiery construct, much in the style of the band’s first self-titled album from nearly two years back. The second atomic psalm is more structured and rhythmic, and Buzz Line is a tighter affair with some lovely sax work from Martin Archer that takes over and spars with Steve Dinsdale’s urgent drums.
This album is as much about the space between the notes as it is about the noise they make, proven by Deuce Of Gears as it turns the engines off and traverses a slow-moving ring of rocky debris orbiting a distant planet. The title track is a Kosmische blues for our times, chopped guitar chording and electric piano reverberate, deep baritone saxophone dispersing the miasma, becoming righteous. Despite its title, Adios Al Futuro has a distinct air of determined optimism. Don’t let the bastards grind you down, daddio!
We sign off with Tiefes Blau, a shimmering Kosmische vessel sailing on the becalmed azure seas into the far off distance, taking its time to develop over a very laid-back beat, echoing and reverberating in and out of focus through accompanying interstellar swooshes that swirl, disperse, and reform in front of the listener, the guitar’s quietly ringing harmonics adding another layer to the space cake. Das Rad in dub, as it were.
A lot of folk are put off by the word “improvisation”, as it conjures images of angular, disconnected noise in the minds of the more straight-laced listener. That can be the case, but in this instance, improvisation means something far less confrontational, but nonetheless exciting and involving. Give this a listen, you may be surprised!
Roger Trenwith
Das Rad – a review and a half!
A review from Darren Bergstein (Downtown Music Gallery NY) – no money changed hands!
Let’s open simply with: wow. Rarely am I rendered speechless by a recording, but when those moments occur, it’s pure heavenly euphoria. This, the second Das Rad joint, isn’t your father’s prog-fuelled space truckin’ by any stretch of the imagination. Hell, to just blithely brandish the trio’s music with the dusty sobriquet ‘prog’ does it an extraordinary injustice; it’s necessary to fully ingest this steadfastedly progressive music, one that encompasses the many shadings and layers summoned in that phrase. “Fusion” works here too, in as much as the trio effortlessly, cleverly, and brilliantly foment works that walk in the footsteps of the pioneering legends of the 70s while making their own profound mark. It’s high time the world caught up with the three chaps who comprise Das Rad: Discus labelhead, saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist Martin Archer, drummer/percussionist Steve Dinsdale, and guitarist Nick Robinson (all three double up on electronics as well). This is a group who know their musical history and drinks deep of that musical history but chooses not to maximize or exploit the very clichés of that musical history.
What percolates throughout is triumphant, strident in the extreme, even caustic at moments, but possessed of singular invention and determination, its influences mere residue, echoes, callback. As syrupy strains of mellotron peek out from the opening minutes of “Inside Reverse”, Archer’s sax effects a splatterfest of fallout settling upon the synthetic, radioactive terrain; when Robinson’s guitars and Dinsdale’s probing cymbals arrive they cut across the acrid electronic tones with scythe-like ferocity.
Ghosts of the past rear their ectoplasmic heads while the music proceeds apace: Archer refracts glimmers of Mel Collins navigating the most scintillating King Crimson sides; Dinsdale channels synth and sequencer miasmas rescued from Dreams Tangerine in color and drumbeats timed to psychedelic prayers inside Ash Ra Tempels; Robinson works a mojo of Fripp/Pinhas intensity, with shout-outs to McLaughlin, Gottsching, even Makoto Kawabata.
Electronics don’t act as mere coloration, either; they’re integral to shaping and expanding the huge canvas on which the trio operates, despite the intense torture all three players visit upon their respective acoustics. It all makes for a head-spinning, confrontational, galvanizing experience, made all the more apparent once you glance inside the gatefold sleeve at the illustrations of the world’s notorious Un-fab Four of Boris Johnson, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un, and Donald Trump. Basically, Das Rad ain’t foolin’ around: takin’ no priz’nas on their Kubrickian trip, a far-out space odyssey energized by post-millennial tensions, and, politics aside, this is a record for the times, the endtimes, and the ages. Ears be blown here, folks.
A fine Adios review
This is the second outing from Sheffield’s Das Rad, following their excellent and highly recommended debut. “Goodbye to the Future” might seem a darkly pessimistic title for this set; and the images of our esteemed leaders from the UK, USA, Russia and North Korea and surreal pastiches of Biblical scenes or fairy tales pasted on top of peeling wallpaper that Nick Robinson has used in his art-work suggest a bizarre dystopia. And yet, the music that Das Rad create has the optimism of a new dawn – albeit with some sinister undertones that blur the edges of the tunes.
Take the opener, ‘Inside Reverse’, which has a stuttering cymbal pattern over a deep, spacy bass line creating space of fuzz-drenched guitar and layered saxophone to present motifs that hang in the air and then dissolve. Over its 11’40 this creates a groove that seems to meander in a never ending, hypnotic circle – when it ends, you immediately want to restart the journey, picking up the ways in which the distorted sounds melt into each other, so that you realise that they are never quite dissolving but mutating. If I was to say that this create a piece of music that manages to be both relaxing and ominous, you can, perhaps, get that juxtaposition of pessimism and optimism that the band so ably and uniquely create.
Over the next two tracks that trade a more optimistic bounce (on ‘Buzz Line’) for the darkly experimental tones of ‘Deuce of Gear’ which segues neatly into the title track. Previous reviews have pointed out the hints of Prog- and Post-Rock and kosmiche Musik. For me, it is the way that the bass line and mixing calls to mind the classic Dub Reggae artists of the 70s and 80s that is most striking on this set, particularly the opener, the title track and the closing ‘Tiefes Blau’.
Just as the pioneers of Dub would mix a tune to its barest essentials, often obscuring the melody of the original to leave a shuddering skeleton of bass and drums, so Das Rad lay a solid and ever entertaining rhythmic bed and pile layer upon layer of sounds from guitar and saxophones. Just when you feel you have got a sense of their modus operandi, they throw curve-balls like ‘Eisblume’, a melancholy saxophone tune over a gently plucked acoustic guitar.
This continues the musical adventurousness of the first album and is a set that never fails to fascinate and excite. Easily a contender for the top ten albums of this year.
>Reviewed by Chris Baber
Vital Weekly Adios review
Das Rad is an English trio of Nick Robinson (guitars, keyboards, electronics), Martin Archer (woodwind, keyboards, synth bass, electronics) and Steve Dinsdale (drums, keyboards, electronics). They define themselves as a band “informed by progressive and krautrock esthetics”. To use a German name as an English Trio is almost a statement in these Brexit-times. Even more, because they choose a Spanish title meaning ‘Goodbye future!’ Nevertheless, they do not seem very upset by this situation as their music is a relaxed and comfortable trip.
They released their first one in 2018 on Archer’s Discus Music. This Sheffield based label is an outlet for many local projects of jazz, improvisation and experimental rock. From the catalogue of this label, the picture arises of a strong and lively local scene, crowded with musicians who do their own thing even when things seem to be a bit out of step of the time. This suggestion counts for Das Rad if you ask me.
With their spaced out and lengthy excursions, they practice an idiom that is not often met any more in our times to my knowledge. They excel in spun out and laid back spacey jams. They use echoing and cascading effects like in the uptempo ‘Buzz Line’. Their creations often have e a slightly psychedelic and sweltering atmosphere.
Keeping the middle between rock and jazz they brew their version of improv rock. Opening track ‘Inside Reverse’ has a pleasant groove with great solo work by Robinson on guitar. A track like ‘Rothko Strobe/Another Place’ is close to soundscaping. It is more about creating an atmosphere than building a musical form. And that’s my problem with this one. Their open structures have a straight forward rhythmic base, offering a good starting point for meandering excursions. For sure a very sympathetic unit, but I missed substance and urgency.
DM
VERY brief review
Someone on rateyourmusic,com has described AAF as “Excellent – a genre must-have”…
More German reviews on BabyBlaue
Das Rad is a relatively new project by the busy Martin Archer, which you can find on these pages because of his solo works, but also as the maker of the Engine Room Favorites, Story Tellers, Inclusion Principle, Transient v Resident, Juxtavoices and especially the Orchestra of knows the Upper Atmosphere. A few years ago, this formed a trio with guitarist Nick Robinson and Steve Dinsdale (radio massacre international and Archer’s bandmate with the Orchestra Of The Upper Atmosphere), with the goal of creating progressive instrumental rock music (quote: ‘driving motorik music’), which at the same time should contain free improvised and more complex composed. After being sporadically live for a while, the trio released their debut album on Archer’s Discus label in November 2018.
A colorful and multi-layered instrumental prog can be found on “Das Rad”, with occasional herb-dry, Canterbury-like and Crimsonesk-frippy reminiscences. The band, which probably started as a guitar-sax-drum trio, uses a very extensive range of instruments here. Electronically amplified and acoustic guitars, all kinds of wind instruments, drums and percussion, and various electronic sounds, keyboard sounds and effects devices mainly produce the music. The result is a mixture of punchy, modern prog driven by Dinsdale’s drums, freer electronic sound crafting, jazz rock, extensive retro ingredients and a little experimental avant-garde (avant prog).
A bit of cabbage rock à la new! and Harmonia, or related motor-repetitive rhythm patterns, a pinch of Canterbury, especially minimalist e-piano patterns in the spirit of Soft Machine (you can hear “Canterbury Steps”) or corresponding sax or flute lines, a few mellotron-like patterns, a good shot more recent King Crimson, Stickprog and Frippsche soundscapes – the retro ingredients – are mixed here with jazzy sax lines, sonorous flute inlays (including the recorder), all sorts of reverberant and resounding guitar excesses, dense braids of electronics, chamber-progressive reed horns, sonorous key tapes, and countless humming sounds, key sounds beeping, growling, whirring and whining instrumental ornaments. Sometimes very rhythmically, sometimes formlessly floating, this music glides along, sonorous and voluminous, sometimes very powerful and dynamic, but often also playfully meandering or hypnotically-cosmically wavering (you can hear the closing “London Steps”).
“The wheel” offers a very colorful, retro-modern program with a lot of reverberation and atmosphere, which should be very popular with progers who appreciate the angular instrumental programs with strong electronic components and jazzy impurities.
Achim Breiling
The wheel. The wheel? How does a British band get such a name? Including partly German titles? In any case, such a British trio called the busy Martin Archer, who was already delighted to hear with Combat Astronomy and Orchestra of the Upper Atmosphere, and is also active in several other projects. The wheel is another one that has been active since 2016 and released its first album in autumn 2018. In addition to Martin Archer, who mainly contributes various woodwind instruments, drummer Steve Dinsdale (also a member of the aforementioned Orchestra of the Upper Atmosphere and electronics technician Radio Massacre International) and guitarist Nick Robinson are among them.
The musical goal of the trio is described on its homepage as “exploring a ‘motorik’ vein ”, and that is a good thing. The rhythm is actually often straightforward and straightforward, driving the music stoically. There are all sorts of escapades for brass and guitar, supplemented by some electronic sounds. Often you go into jazz-rocky areas, occasionally with a slight Canterbury influence, in addition there are influences from the newer King Crimson (very nice, for example, in Tenser) and now and then some electronic herb rock. The latter can dominate in phases and dissolve the music into largely free, cosmic, wavering sounds; not jiggling comfortably, as is so often the case with the old herb dryers, but also here with rough edges.
Nevertheless, the music never seems too unapproachable, despite some excursions into avant-garde worlds of sound it remains mostly relatively “catchy” (which pronounced melodic freaks might judge differently). The original and virtuoso instrumental prog of Das Rad (von dem Rad? Vom Rad?) Is strongly recommended to jazz and brass-savvy listeners. Incidentally, the logo on the CD is original, too, that of the insert
Jochen Rindfrey
Jon Short
His early musical career included Typhoon Saturday, (who spawned chart-toppers “Living in a Box”) who had a deal with Polydor and released 3 singles to minimal success.
Drummer/Keyboardist cut his teeth on the Teesside and Sheffield music scenes before moving to London in the late 80’s. Drummed with 
