Super Furry Animals’ Gruff Rhys has today shared details of a new experimental album titled Pang! set for release on 13 September via Rough Trade.
Two tracks have already been uploaded to Spotify and show a weaving of Gruff's knack for guitar-based melodic songwriting with a grooving South African feel.
The two tracks that you can listen to below now ('Pang' and 'Bae Bae Bae') – same as the whole album – have been produced and mixed under Gruff Rhys’ request by esteemed South African house producer Muzi.
Muzi is described by Rhys in an interview he did today with Lauren Laverne on 6Music as “a house producer who has got an amazing pop sensibility.”
The interview also reveals the following:
Their creative partnership began because “I sang on track he recorded called 'Vessels' with BCUC and that was the first thing we recorded together and it was such a good experience.”
The decision to work on an album came a bit later.
“I sent a track to him last year ‘Bye Bye Bye’ - which means bae bae bae; it’s about Cardiff Bay - and he remixed it and it was amazing. I wrote to him asking if he’d like to mix a whole album. And he said he’d do it if it was in Welsh. He has to speak six languages daily. He was sort of interested in the Welsh that I sung for him." And so Gruff naturally obliged.
‘Bae Bae Bae’ is the public’s joint first introduction to the Pang! album and a fantastic sign of a great album to come.
Title track ‘Pang’!, meanwhile, “is a list song," says Gruff. "Various complaints. It’s a sunny day and then you remember the horrific things going on in the world and then you have a pang of horror. But also social media pangs, or bad design."
Evaluating the unexpected direction the album’s taken, Gruff adds in the 6Music interview: “I’m comfortable writing what comes naturally sometimes that’s not the most exciting thing. When a chance comes along to experiment and do something new I try to jump on it.”
Elsewhere, he is curating a festival taking place in his hometown of Bethesda in North Wales.
Named ARA deg (welsh for slowly), it takes 19 - 21 September 2019 at Neuadd Ogwen close to the river Ogwen in the foothills of the Snowdonia National Park. Headliners are Aldous Harding (19th), MÙM (20th), and Gruff Rhys (21st).
Gruff Rhys headline tour dates can be found here
