Support NeoGAF

[enjoy bell woods]

SUPER FURRY ANIMALS and frontman GRUFF RHYS is to release his debut solo album - and the band have revealed full details of their forthcoming LIGHTNING FRYDAY event.

The band's label Placid Casual will release the record in January 2005. Clocking in at 29 minutes and containing 11 songs, 'Yr Atal Genhedlaeth' was recorded with Gorwel Owen at Stiwdio Ofn at various points during spring and summer 2004.


SFA are also hard at work on their seventh studio album - the follow up to 2003's 'Phantom Power' - to be released on Epic during spring 2005. Frontman Rhys told NME recently that the album "has an orchestral feel to it".

---

The band have also released full details of their sold-out Lightning Fryday event, which will take place on October 1 at London's Royal Festival Hall. It starts at 6.30pm, and SFA will play two sets across three rooms in the venue. The band will be joined by a supporting cast featuring Zabrinski, bravecaptain, Richard James from Gorky's Zygotic Mynci and Mugison. There will also be a chance for fans to confess all sins to Howard Marks in the Howard Marks Confessional Booth. Surprise guest DJs will appear, and there will be and visual performances and art installations by Pete Fowler and Mark James.

A few extra tickets will be released at 3pm on the day of the show. These can be reserved by calling the Box Office (0870 160 2522) at this time.

Super Furry Animals will also appear at Cardiff Point Theatre on September 30 as a warm up for Lightning Fryday. Tickets, priced £12, will go on sale at 9am on Friday (September 24) exclusively from Spillers Records in Cardiff.

---

I think if any of you idiots reading this live in London, you'd better go to Lightning Fryday. And take me lots of pictures.

http://www.kvrx.org/locallive/performance.php?pid=473

Check that out. You can hear what Gruff sounds like when he's going solo. He has a really haunting voice when he sings in Welsh.

 

[bridegur]

Cool, I love SFA. I ordered Phantom Phorce the other day but it's yet to come.

 

[enjoy bell woods]

I got Phantom Phorce at Borders the other day. The packaging is REALLY awesome, and some of the remixes are great.

 

[Semjaza Azazel]

I'll check it out. I love Super Furry Animals...just don't talk about them much here.

 

[enjoy bell woods]

"Lead singer Gruff Rhys did reveal some information about their seventh album, due out next spring. He said, 'The next album will be generally more reflective, with more personal views. But it differs from song to song.' But for the first time, other members of Super Furry Animals will be singing songs that they have written for the album. Gruff said, 'Bunf had a song on the last album, but he has two on this one, Daf has two songs and Cian has three. They have written the lyrics for their own songs so it is nice to have a different slant.' However, Guto Pryce, the band's bassist, said that surprisingly the album sounds the most like a Super Furry album, even though Gruff has shared writing credits.'For some reason it does sound more like a Super Furry Animals album, than any of the others we have done,' he said.The album is set to be the most orchestral the band have ever produced but they are also keen to keep it upbeat."

I'm REALLY excited now. They're never content with staying one thing.

The band is always reinventing itself, and that's why I love them so much. If you listen to each progressive album, you can hear their evolution.

 

[enjoy bell woods]

THIS IS EXCITING NEWS IMO

BUMP

 

[SFA_AOK]

I endorse this thread.

 

[enjoy bell woods]

I endorse this thread.

SFA AOK!

 

[enjoy bell woods]

Yetis united for Animal rites
Dean Irvine
After nine years together Super Furry Animals have not run out of ideas


SUPER FURRY ANIMALS are one of pop’s great enigmas. They’re famously eccentric. They once tried to power the band with their pet hamster’s wheel (or at least sang about it) and have sampled Paul McCartney munching vegetables.

Their first EP was called Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyndrobwllantysilio-gogogochynygofod(inspace)E.P. and they are in the record books for having the shortest single ever. They are also massively popular.

Over the past nine years they’ve racked up six Top-Ten albums, last year’s Phantom Power being their most critically and commercially successful yet. An upcoming greatest hits album, Songbook, and a “retrospective live spectacular” at the Royal Festival Hall suggest these unassuming mavericks may be dangerously close to becoming an institution.



They, of course, would balk at that title. A group that enjoy dressing up in yeti outfits and sharing the stage with huge inflatable animals aren’t likely to rest on their laurels. At their home in Cardiff, nursing hangovers and tea, it’s a job even to get these putative national treasures interested in their forthcoming release.

“We were asked to do a ‘Best of’, so we just stuck together our singles. It seemed like the least stressful way,” says the lead singer, Gruff Rhys. “It’s not something we thought the public needed. In fact we’re almost as surprised to see this record as they are.”

“We haven’t really stopped working,” adds the bassist, Guto Pryce, “so we haven’t really had time to be sentimental about our old songs.”.

Formed in Cardiff in 1993, together with Dafydd Ieuan on drums and his brother Cian on keyboard, the Super Furry Animals started out taking techno sound systems round festivals. Then in 1995, on only their second gig outside Wales as a band, they were spotted and signed by the Britpop Svengali Alan McGee and in 1996 released their first album, Fuzzy Logic.





Yes, we’re Welsh and yes, we’re proud of it, but we’d be proud of coming from anywhere


Huw Bunford, guitarist





Fans of everything from Hawkwind to Krautrock to folk — and singing about Marxism, hamsters and drug smugglers — they were always out of sync with bands such as their label-mates Oasis. “We hated that whole concept of Britpop, it seemed like an incredibly conservative movement,” says Rhys.

“We came in late, so we were like the band in the kitchen of the Britpop party,” says the guitarist Huw Bunford.

They are also outsiders in a more practical sense. Never interested in the music industry game, they all still live in their home town, passing daily the schools and offices where they worked before fame beckoned. “None of us is precious, we all appreciate what a good situation we’re in. There’s nothing worse than a whingeing pop star,” says Pryce.

Proud of their roots, they nevertheless dismiss any lazy generalisations. “We’re so bored of being characterised as Welsh. Yes, we’re Welsh and yes, we’re proud of it, but we’d be proud of coming from anywhere,” explains Bunford. “It seemed to be the thing to do in the mid-1990s, lump some bands together that come from the same general area and then call it a scene. Thankfully things have changed now, although we do get asked to do a lot of things that are very ‘Welsh’. We often turn them down — we’re hardly ambassadors.”

Even so, as we wander across Cardiff Bay, Rhys points out the building site of the new Welsh Assembly. Politics is something the band has never ignored but they’ve managed to retain an engaged voice without too much tub-thumping. “We do have a sense of social responsibility, it’s just that we’re incredibly irresponsible people,” Rhys says.

A good example of their singular approach, is their epic anti-establishment song The Man Don't Give a F*** which has just been rereleased in a 22-minute live version. “Songs become politicised at certain times,” says Rhys. “It’s actually a song about proportional representation. Also it’s not hard to find a song with the word ‘f***’ in it 50 times these days, so we thought we’d up the quota. Ultimately though we’re in a rock band and make our living touring bars. We make it up as we go along, making a few mistakes and hopefully we do a few positive things as well.”

Forthcoming civic responsibilities include hosting Lightning Fryday next week at the Royal Festival Hall. “We wanted to rename it the People’s Festival Hall,” says Rhys, “but they said no”.

Instead the band are planning other ways to gently subvert their surroundings. Experimental techno, an indulgent set for a rare sit-down audience and a 40ft inflatable bear are all on the cards. As if that wasn’t enough to keep them busy, they have also begun work on a seventh album, something Rhys promisingly describes as, “really decadent, like Steely Dan on crack”.

But there are dangers to mainstream success. “We realise that we're in a bit of an unusual situation,” Rhys says. “We are a band that’s stayed together for more than nine years and things are actually becoming easier. We just try and do our own thing. Some things work, some things don’t, but it’s better to regret what you have done, than regret what you haven’t. The main thing is we still get excited about making music together.”

Yes, as you can tell, I am thrilled.

Have a video: http://sonymusiceurope.com/cgi-bin/...ve.net&snymusicaoma/video/900020000014343.wmv

 

[enjoy bell woods]

They just performed a BRILLIANT live session last night with John Peel: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/alt/johnpeel/thisweek/20041005_peel.shtml#sess2

Just set it up for about 25 minutes in. Hometown Unicorn, a couple Welsh songs, The Turning Tide, Demons... Really great performance.

 

[enjoy bell woods]

IN THE STUDIO...SUPER FURRY ANIMALS
TITLE: TBC
DUE: SPRING 2005
PRODUCTION: MARIO CALDATO JNR.
SONGS: LASER BEAM, THE HORN, COLONISE THE MOON, WHERE`S MY FUCKING SHOES?

"Steely Dan on crack"
"a bit soundtracky, a bit 1980s cop show"
"Knight-Rider at the point of cosmic rapture"
"like being sucked into space"
"most orchestral record we`ve ever done"
"cosmic funk track about cleansing the world with our super laser beams"
"very simple pop songs with some optical illusions for the ears. And a couple of lobsters thrown in."