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Super Furry Animals.
It should come as no surprise that in the world of Super Furry
Animals there's no difference between a handful of Welsh students
and a hundred holy Spaniards. "We kind of made that up. The
press release was looking a bit boring..." confesses singer
Gruff Rhys. "We actually had 12 students from Cardiff singing
and we recorded them four or five times over to sound huge and
then the press release said there was 150 Catalan monks... but
you know, it's just as dramatic, the sound they made."
We're talking about Zoom!, the staggering opening song
on the band's latest album, 'Love Kraft'. "The original version
was 20 minutes long, and then we edited it down to its highlights
and added the choir. We recorded it in the Catalan countryside
and then we took it back to Cardiff and edited it down to a
palatable seven minutes and then we got some students in to
sing and then chopped it up."
As a song it sets the scene for what's a wonderfully inventive record, but one that plays within music's accepted conventions, something Rhys confirms. "We feel we're quite a conventional band really. We're not particularly experimental. I think people mistake imagination for weirdness, you know? And I think they're quite separate things."
For all of 'Love Kraft's expansiveness, the band had intended to record their most stripped-back album so far. "We wanted to capture the sound of the band, as it were. We've been touring now for 10 years with the same line-up and so this is not the most electronic record, you know it's quite a simple band record really," Rhys explains. "We recorded a lot of live performances in the studio, and we found there was a lot more space than usual because we kept it simpler. So in the end there was a lot of space for choirs and strings, so we thought we were making the most simple record and we ended up making the most orchestral," he says, with the laugh of a man still wondering exactly what happened. "I think we just like to keep it fresh. We'll probably react to this record now and make a really angry electronic record, but I think every record should have its own personality and hopefully we'll move on and not repeat ourselves too much."
While you expect a band's new record to feature heavily in their live set, Rhys explains that the new songs fit a little differently in the live show. "It's quite different for us - it's a very mellow record - so we play seven or eight songs. We usually open up with 'em and then play the older, faster material at the end, so that builds up the intensity." Modern technology ensures translating the new material to the stage isn't too big a headache. "We've got an old friend [who's] been playing live with us for six years now and he's a percussionist, and we have powerful samplers and we have computers so we can dictate all the choirs and string arrangements on stage. And we've been playing in front of a large screen so everything's got a video accompaniment, and we've been plugging ourselves into the light show."
Pardon?
"We have these suits that are kind of electric: they emit a kind of green glow, so we've been entering another realm on stage."
Super Furry Animals joined New Order, The Fall and others for
a tribute gig on John Peel Day, marking the first anniversary
since the legendary DJ's death. Rhys reveals that Zoom!
actually came about at Peel's house. "The first version we wrote
a few years ago, on the way to his house - because by the end
he was doing sessions from home and we got invited to do a session
and we sort of wrote the riff on the way in, and its the kind
of easy-going atmosphere where you could try a new song out
on radio! We always think of him with that song."
For the band it's a chance to pay tribute to an absent friend as much as a man who impacted on the nation: or, as Gruff Rhys rather brilliantly sums it up "It goes to show how much effect he had playing Half-Man Half-Biscuit on the radio!"
Wade Howland
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'Love Kraft' is out now through Shock.
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