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.L‘w 7 _ rib-minds and musical genres with - _ 4,. cutting edge"t6ehnology and their . . . .Euvmc tun, SUPER FURRY ANIMALS
‘ - - induceyl-‘urrgmania in the good people ‘ Of Glasgow. Words: Doug Johnstone
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0‘ F.“ v he world géds Super Furry Animals. In a music I ; scene full _ apathetic joumeymen, the Welsh five- v. '- ‘. . . g piece are assioirate pioneers. A spectacular mess of .- ‘ cantradictions, a riotous celebration of the 3 , exceptional over the mundane, this lot are the most inventive, -— - entertaining and downright daft band in Britain at the moment. i This is the band whose debut Welsh-language EP, back in , 1995. was called Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwy ndrobwllantysiliogogogochynygofod (In Space): It was apparently an effort to get into the Guinness Book Of Records for the longest song title.
This is the band who used to be a rave sound system collective before they formed the Super Furries. This is the band who have called Tony Blair a war criminal; refused to
a play .at the opening of the Welsh Assembly because the Queen
_, . j ‘awasPthere; tried to make a feature film; resurrected Howard
“f” g i... a ‘ p i' a, is», Marks; been Characters in a footy video game; driven a techno ' ' ' I » @k to festivals; released the biggest selling Welsh language allum of all time; been the subject of a House of Commons
motion; and remixed The Beatles. "
, They’ve written songs about mobile phones, mullets, alien “ ~’ ,1. Einstein’s parents and guacamole, but they’ve also . . _ ‘ “fiWnsens’ifiyegheart-cmshing ballads and gloriously
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otriumphant pop, Their song ‘The Man Don’t Give A Fuck' contains the word-“fuck’ 53 times: and is an anthem for a disaffected generation. They’re a techno, surf, punk, calypso, glam, ambient, prog, country, psychedelic rock band, and more besides.
Oh yeah, and they smoke a lot of weed. An awful lot of weed. Which becomes imm'ediately apparent when you speak to Gruif Rhys, the band’s singer, guitarist and (is this just me?) Ray Davies lookalike. Ruminating on every syllable, Rhys is the slowest speaker in the world, and you sometimes suspect that he’s fallen asleep between words. Apparently, he’s getting psyched about the band’s forthcoming mini-tour which takes in London, Manchester and Glasgow, but you wouldn’t know it from his soporific demeanour.
‘We haven’t played an instrument for a year, so it’s quite exciting,’ he says in his amiable, treacle-thick Cardiff accent. ‘We wanted to get back into touring gradually, so instead of playing a week and taking the weekends off, we thought we’d take the weeks off and play at the weekends.’
Of course, being the Super Furries, it’s no normal tour. Promoting the band’s forthcoming album, Rings Amund The World (which will make history by being the first album ever to be simultaneously released on DVD) the whole shebang is being billed as ‘Furrymania’. The band plan to decamp to each city on consecutive weekends, have cinema screenings of the album’s accompanying videos, put on a club night where band members will DJ, perform a full gig and even squeeze in an acoustic show.
Never a band to shy away from technology, SFA are pushing the boat out once more for their forthcoming gigs. ‘We’re gonna be doing projections using the V-Jam