DISCOMBOBULATED

It conveys the confusion and frustration of living in a 21st-century reality that conspires against the reassuring normalities of everyday life. Hen Ogledd meets this challenge with humor, defiance, and playfulness, resulting in music that’s colorful, chaotic, and occasionally deeply moving.

As well as the placard slogans, there is fantastical bucolic storytelling, about a steadfast horse called Clara, a meeting of spirits at a millpond on the awe-inspiring 20-minute song Clear Pools, and the psychedelic doom-vision of Land of the Dead, the latter delivered in Davies’s gorgeous Welsh poetry.

The multiple styles and masses of guest appearances on Discombobulated could have produced a scrambled blob, but instead the community around the core band members adds clarity and strength.

With Discombobulated, Hen Ogledd have grown to fully inhabit their costumes, Sun Ra Arkestra style, with the greatest musical and lyrical realisation yet of their diverse strengths. [Mar 2026, p.49]

It’s a smile-inducing, healing experience, one which reminds you of all the good-weird in the world, rather than the bad-weird, which so often seems to be winning in these strange, discombobulated days.

Hen Ogledd make music on their fifth album which feels rooted in something more timeless than simple pop. [Feb 2026, p.101]

Dizzying stuff. [Apr 2026, p.91]

DISCOMBOBULATED is an idiosyncratic record, overflowing with eccentric charms and a uniquely British (in the best sense of the word) personality.