Test Dept and Brith Gof expand ‘Gododdin’ into 2026 remaster box set
Test Dept and Brith Gof reissue “Gododdin” as “Gododdin: 2026 Remaster”, a 3CD/1DVD box set plus red vinyl LP, out 4 December 2026 on Artoffact Records.
Test Dept and the Welsh performance company Brith Gof release “Gododdin: 2026 Remaster” on 4 December 2026 via Artoffact Records. The set expands their 1989 album into a 3CD/1DVD box, alongside a separate red vinyl LP and a digital edition.
“Gododdin” is based on Y Gododdin, the earliest surviving Welsh-language poem, written around 600 AD. It tells of 300 Celtic warriors who attacked 100,000 invading Angles and lost. Test Dept and Brith Gof first staged the piece as a live performance at an abandoned Rover car factory in Cardiff in December 1988, using 600 tons of sand, 50 trees and 30 wrecked cars on a set that flooded as the show went on. Further performances followed in 1989 in Italy, the Netherlands, West Germany and Scotland.
The original 1989 studio album was produced by Ken Thomas at Jacobs Studios from Test Dept’s existing studio and field recordings, augmented with brass and wind courtesy of Brith Gof’s John E R Hardy and bagpipes from Alistair Adams. Paul Jamrozy’s voice runs alongside the Welsh-language vocals of Lis Hughes Jones.
“Gododdin: 2026 Remaster” widens that original 7-track album with 19 tracks that have not previously been released. The first disc is a reworked version built from newly unearthed multitrack tapes of the early studio sessions, put together by Test Dept founder members Graham Cunnington and Paul Jamrozy during the summer of 2026. The second disc carries a live recording from one of the 1989 performances, staged in a quarry in Polverigi, Italy. The DVD holds a documentary from the period, with live footage and interviews with performers, academics and other experts.
Compiled by Test Dept with input from Brith Gof members Lis Hughes Jones, John E R Hardy and Heike Roms, the set was remastered by Paul Lavigne at Kontrast Mastering. It comes in a 5-panel ecopak with a 24-page booklet of archival imagery and writing, including an essay by author and Test Dept researcher Alexei Monroe. The artwork for both the box and the separate red vinyl LP was redesigned by Paul Jamrozy and Stefan Alt (ant-zen); the vinyl edition carries the original album plus one previously unreleased track and a printed insert.
Ahead of the box set, Test Dept released the advance single “Gwr a Aeth Gatraeth / Prologue (Early Studio Sessions, Reworked 2026)” on 2 October 2026, available on Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube.
“Gododdin: 2026 Remaster” is the second in Test Dept’s ongoing series of archival reissues on Artoffact Records, who signed the band in 2025 for catalogue reissues and a new album. It follows the 4xCD “Industrial Overture: Studio & Live Recordings 1982-1985”, released a year earlier. Artoffact will also release new Test Dept material in 2027.
A separate event ties into the reissue: Test Dept and Brith Gof take part in a discussion and Q&A about “Gododdin” at Chapter in Cardiff on 24 October, as part of the Experimentica festival’s 25th-anniversary programme.
About Test Dept
Test Dept formed in London in the early 1980s as an industrial music group built around live percussion on scrap metal and found objects. In 1988 and 1989, the band collaborated with the Welsh avant-garde theatre company Brith Gof on “Gododdin”, staging it first at an abandoned car factory in Cardiff and then on tour in Italy, the Netherlands, West Germany and Scotland. The 1989 studio album version was produced by Ken Thomas at Jacobs Studios.
Test Dept returned to active release and performance in the 2020s. In 2025, the band signed to Artoffact Records for a series of catalogue reissues alongside a new studio album. The first of those reissues, the 4xCD “Industrial Overture: Studio & Live Recordings 1982-1985”, arrived in October 2025. “Gododdin: 2026 Remaster”, out 4 December 2026, is the second. Current members Graham Cunnington and Paul Jamrozy built new versions of the early “Gododdin” studio sessions for the reissue during the summer of 2026, working from recently unearthed multitrack tapes. Test Dept continue to tour, with confirmed UK and European dates running from October 2026 into the summer of 2027, and have a new studio album due via Artoffact in 2027.
About Brith Gof
Brith Gof is a Welsh performance company known for large-scale, site-specific theatre work that drew on Welsh history and language. Co-founded by figures including Mike Pearson, Lis Hughes Jones and Clifford McLucas, the company staged “Gododdin” with Test Dept in Cardiff in 1988, adapting the early Welsh poem Y Gododdin into a promenade performance inside a disused car factory. Hughes Jones, John E R Hardy and Heike Roms were directly involved in compiling “Gododdin: 2026 Remaster” alongside Test Dept.
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