Electronic side projects, like import-price-paying fanboys, suffer. Even the occasional breakout commercial successes-- Folk Implosion, the Postal Service-- never quite earn the critical props proffered to their progenitors. Maybe the neophilic indie kids cultivating a taste for electronic crossovers can't win friends with records linked to veteran guitar acts (nor, sadly, with salad). Acid Casuals may count Super Furry Animals keyboardist Cian Ciárán among their members, but Omni shouldn't be consigned to the synth-based novelty scrapheap alongside, say, the Album Leaf or 1997 Claptronica excursion TDF.

While Omni could be seen as merely SFA's "lost" techno album, its ambient, melodic near-instrumentals deserve to succeed on their own merits. Each track's songy enough to leapfrog Isolée and layered enough for bobbins, analogue-bent entirety conjuring what Analord might've been. The languid Dennis Wilson pacing from Ciárán's Love Kraft contributions washes over the electronic weirdness found in Guerilla-era tracks like "Some Things Comes From Nothing". Gorgeous lead single "Bowl Me Over" is Omni's only conventional pop song, cooing doo-wop romance like a stoned sentimentalist's take on "Something 4 the Weekend"-- still SFA's most immediate tune.

The album's other tracks rely mostly on nonsense vocals, such as the jazzy, Cornelius-kooky "Wa Da Da", harmony-drenched "Y Ferch Ar Y Cei Yn Rio", or waltzing "Kraken", which features an operatic female voice that explains Ciárán's choice of Bizet's "Pearl Fishers" for last year's Under the Influence compilation. Chiming, slightly dissonant opener "If I'm a Selt, You're a Sunt" tags near Caribou territory, while penultimate "Luciano" licks high-pitched synth tones from Mwng's "'Dacw Hi" before lounging in hot-Air orchestration.

So call it one small blip for SFA, one enormously satisfying listen for 2006. Like Gruff Rhys on his 2005 solo album Yr Atal Genhedlaeth or, hopefully, Dafydd Ieuan's bilingual rock group the Peth, Ciárán and co-Casual Kev Tame (former bassist for Welsh-language pop group Big Leaves) have created a side project work that would stand as a career highlight for many of their peers. If you're one of those neophilic indie kids, just pretend they're German twentysomethings.