SUPER FURRY ANIMALS

Ice Hockey Hair would be my second or third choice. Genuinely surprized to realize that two of their most anthemic tracks are my favorites, it is not a quality I tend to prefer.

Mountain People wasn't always a favorite mind you. As best I remember, the crazy synth riff and dissonant guitar anti-solo at the end of Herman <3's Pauline was the first thing that really hooked me as a pissed off 14 y/o.

I had a cassette of Fuzzy Logic before that but wasn't into it.

It's cute that after giving Ron Mael a shoutout on Fuzzy Logic and sticking his portrait in the liners, they reasserted their appreciation for Sparks by writing a song about Einstein's patents on the next one.

I think the celebratory element was something I tolerated more than enjoyed at the time, for the most part. It was all about the comic and charicatured expressions of rage.

They were certainly very good at channeling this anger into fun, collective release

Deflatormouse I took maybe 4 mos off ilx, but in poking my nose back in, and immed learning more than i can absorb, i suppose— that’s why i’m here 19 years after greenspun stuff. Ppl here often really know, and can explain. (RATW is still apotheosis lol).

They were my favorite band from the time I was 13 to 17-ish. I've had almost 25 years to think about why and I'm still figuring it out lol

I def share the deranged, antic sense of humor so that's part of it. But I'm really bad at processing my emotions so I'll probably never figure it out. That might be one of the reasons I was drawn to this band, their approach to dealing with emotions could be very indirect.

https://podfollow.com/1566723156/episode/284bd5820a835740a4d52e0b8e8ed7dd22e00cde/view

Fairly interesting convo with Guto & Cian. Cian's audio is pretty bad, but listenable enough.

Just picked up the long-overdue vinyl reissue of Rings Around the World. It’s been many years since I’ve listened to this album front to back, and I had all but forgotten what an end to end masterpiece it is. Even the songs I don’t love really _work_ in the context of the album. Sequencing FTW.

Altho for my money, the CD version with the back-to-back punch of “Tradewinds/Roman Road” is even better than the original album proper.

Only noticed more recently how Fragile Happiness is one of their best songs

The instrumentals are fun to listen to, just to really hear what they threw at this thing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEtU9GQwUbk

(they released an additional 'disc' last Friday with all the demos, etc.)

Think juxtaposed comes out particularly well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQx78IMM3DY

“Acoustic” mix of Tradewinds is so lovely, wow

We'll go to Miami
Take old friends and family
We'll stay out and party
Does Will Smith lie?
Does he ever cave in and cry?

One of the weirdest things I've discovered from all the reissues & rarities:

They'd been working on "John Spex" since the Guerrilla sessions and somehow ended up turning it into "Lazer Beam," easily the worst SFA single ever and runner-up for worst SFA song in general.

I think they could've turned it into something cool. the LFO & Danger Mouse remixes were all right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DG7BxOUIYJY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvyPrlYPm0Q

I think they had something...

"Point your random finger at the sky" always stuck out as a weird lyric. Now I see it's based on the sample in the second outtake.

Def. one of SFA's biggest failures. I could never suss out a good melody or idea in the song. At one point I imagined a nice cosmic guitar solo in place of the "We will conquer utopia with space chariots" bit and thought that might lead the song somewhere.

https://thepalebluedots1.bandcamp.com/album/lots-of-dots-2?fbclid=IwAR0uLj0ypugR3T4IiMoI-0GeYidAMhH4_F_LYWPsOK4A5Jr-bevVqx-IasA

My favorite side project. Insta-buy.

Pale Blue Dots album is out in a couple days. Looks like just a few copies left.

http://thepalebluedots1.bandcamp.com/releases

This new track that features Gruff is quite nice:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX9V838P76I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFezk2G-lp8

Well, Bunf just managed to release the best SFA-related thing since SFA were around.

Two and a half weeks later - by far Bunf's best song, aside from "White Socks/Flip Flops." I need an entire album that sounds like "Thermos." He even finally got his voice sounding a little less shaky.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtNeuXVqvi4

Cian harmonizes with Gruff beautifully. Their pairing on “Download” is sublime.

― afriendlypioneer, Monday, September 6, 2021 3:23 PM (four months ago) bookmarkflaglink

Cousins. Which adds a further layer to their obsession with The Beach Boys.

I'm all about Bunf right now.

Thermos is so good.

The first song ever recorded as Super Furry Animals, featuring actor, Rhys Ifans on lead vocals revealed by the band with time-limited, Bandcamp release: Of No Fixed Identity

Former lead singer and friend of the band, Ifans, performed the track in the studio in 1993 before taking the path towards a Hollywood career

Left in band archives for almost thirty years, the Bandcamp-only, one-week release emerges in support of the www.crowdjustice.com/case/save-the-severn-estuary/ campaign.

The song that started it all for Super Furry Animals and kept under wraps for almost thirty years, Of No Fixed Identity, featuring actor, Rhys Ifans on vocal duties has been surprise released by the band – but it’s only available strictly from Bandcamp and for a very limited time only.

https://superfurryanimals.bandcamp.com/releases

Never knew that stuff was recorded or that Gruff was in the band at the same time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1m7w6P75Gqs

I am loving this new track. It’s SFA all the way.

Looks like Das Koolies are going for it. 15 track album in September. Not a single song from the released EP or singles to date.

https://www.qobuz.com/nz-en/album/dk01-das-koolies/tkpgobxtyr2ob

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmgwRdT3ijw

https://www.roughtrade.com/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.roughtrade.com%2Fmedia%2Fthumbnails%2Fproducts%2FDas_Koolies_-_DK.01_62c1b38f_thumbnail_2048.webp&w=750&q=100

Tracklist:
1 Best Mindfuck Yet
2 Out Of This World
3 Nuthin Sandwich
4 Shakedown
5 A Ride
6 Collide
7 Katal
8 Pain Down The Drain
9 Montezuma
10 Holy Shit
11 Masters Of Mankind
12 Alligator
13 Sky
14 Sorry
15 Wired For Sound

A new world emerges via a musical ‘big bang’ emanating from Das Koolies’ post-industrial Cardiff docklands hideaway, as the band announces that their debut album, DK.01 will be released on Fri 22 September 2023. Made with the help of contributors and influences as diverse as MC Killa Kela, 17th Century composer, Henry Purcell and their four decades together as Super Furry Animals, the album promises a genre-bending expansion of their most electronic-leaning and experimental ideas.

Quickly following up the success of the release of their debut The Condemned EP, Huw Bunford, Cian Ciarán, Dafydd Ieuan and Guto Pryce return with DK.01’s first blast of friendly fire in Best Mind F*ck Yet, forming an instant connection between their past and future. Embryonic versions having played the Furries off the stage during their MWNG tour in the mid-00’s, and featuring actor/former-SFA front man, Rhys Ifans on vocals, any band biographers will be compelled to furiously update their records as the strings-laced kraut/techno pounder is born into the band’s border-free land of possibility.

Best Mind F*ck Yet’s earthquake release comes with a new video emerging as part of the band’s creative link-up with artist, Edwin Burdis/Dah Dit Dit (Arctic Monkeys, Blossoms, The Coral), continuing to develop a visual world to complement the audio following the release of an animated video for The Condemned at the start of this year.

The release of the fifteen track DK.01 this autumn re-opens the book on the quartet’s long-term friendship and musical union at the next chapter, with their meandering tale together having begun in the vortex of north Wales’ illicit rave scene in the early-1990s. Last seen on stage together as the Furries’ final tour concluded in 2016, Bunford, Ciarán, Ieuan and Pryce reconvened Das Koolies around poker nights and half-remembered riffs shortly after, scratching a persistent, 30-year itch to perform a factory reset and deep dive into the synth-driven sound they’d heard in their heads all along.

Looking forward to the album’s release Das Koolies say: “The return has been welcomed. Unanimously. Dissent, however, will be tolerated. An abundance of ideas, new inventions and old friendships percolate, produce and persist. Come this way as a dead end is circumvented to show an open road.”

Alongside Ifans, guests set to appear on the album include influential British MC Killa Kela and the physical infrastructure of Cardiff, Wales’ capital city itself, as field recordings of percussive strikes on metallic structures make their way onto the record, symbolising the freedom with which ideas entered the studio from all possible sources.

Referring to classical composer, Henry Purcell with a bassline inspired by 300-year-old examples of the same, plus completing one demo that has existed in one form or another since 1998, DK.01 will reveal and celebrate the elasticity of time and the musical ideas within it, as it will inevitably expose the band’s own liberty to do just as they please.

DK.01 will be released in multiple physical formats including collectors’ edition vinyl variants, whilst the band also works towards making their live debut to coincide with the release in September.

Das Koolies DK.01 was produced by Das Koolies and mixed in collaboration with Grammy nominated engineer, Tom Forrest (Duke Dumont, Basement Jaxx) and MPG (Music Producer’s Guild) UK Music Producer of the Year 2022 Marta Salogni (Bjork, Depeche Mode).

Thanks for the update afriendlypioneer.

This reminds me that I have to run the SFA poll this year and I'm thinking September/October will be when I run it. I have other plans for the board this summer.

Good idea. I’ve begun enjoying their latter-day albums more than the classics lately so I’ll throw the results a bit. :)

ranking SFA songs would certainly be a struggle, possibly a chore. but i can volunteer to do something like what the table is the table did for the Low poll i.e. repeating that i can't understand how some of you like their Epic stuff as much as their Creation stuff.

guess i've already done that actually.

ranking albums more manageable although it's a tough call between Radiator and Guerrilla.

fwiw i listened to Radiator a couple of months ago and some of the lyrics are so cringe, i mean they always were but my tolerance for this ain't what it used to be.

i can deal with the dad jokes but "why do we do what they tell you" is too much.

i.e. repeating that i can't understand how some of you like their Epic stuff as much as their Creation stuff.

I got into them when Rings Around the World had just come out in the UK. Must've been late 2000? (I could look this up.) The whole thing swept me away -- tour, DVD, 5.1 surround, the b-sides. I don't listen to it much anymore and I doubt I'd call it my favorite album, but it hit me hard and that carried into Phantom Power. Phantom Power culminates with one of their greatest-ever songs, maybe their greatest A-side? I liked how quickly they could turn inward and create epic-seeming ballads, so I enjoyed the rest of the album as well. I was a little too late for the '90s albums, but obviously they're all classics for the most part. Radiator's production is unbearable 2 me these days, unfortunately.

I've been waiting for them to unleash the synths & bass, so the new stuff w/o Gruff is especially exciting. DD/LY felt like the start of something really good, and then it ended.

i'll have to come back to this, but what don't you like about the production of Radiator? i love it.

Mario Caldato is one of my favorite audio guys of all time, the records he did with Young MC, Tone Loc and the Beastie Boys sound amazing. especially Loc's. i def fantasized about SFA hooking up with him in the 90's, but when they did it was like 'ehh, i wish they'd just go back to Gorwel Owen's place'.

i started with Fuzzy Logic but thought it was just okay. Radiator was the one that made them my favorite band. i don't think any of their other albums would have grabbed me to the same extent. that is to say, i was extremely committed to liking Guerrilla before i heard it. it was a much more challenging album (in the sense that it's pointedly hollow and disposable and relentlessly goofy) and i wouldn't have made the effort otherwise. Northern Lites (the advance single) did not prepare me for this. of course, those are the qualities i love about it now.

On paper/in theory, Guerrilla is my favorite SFA album and Rings is my least favorite. In terms of what i would actually want to listen to, Guerilla is probably 2nd to Radiator and RATW is somewhere in the middle or, that is to say i might choose to listen to it over a few of their later albums.

RATW was the first major SFA album (regarding Mwng as a Mutations-like "not the real follow-up" release) that doesn't take a surprising left turn from the previous. For the first time, it reshuffles and builds on their existing stylistic trademarks instead of introducing new ones.

But my chief complaint is RATW represented an abdication of their previous insurgent stance against the mainstream pop and rock they had been poised to infiltrate, and recast them as a nerdy indie band who revel in their record collections. i think a comparison of the way different kinds of references are deployed on Fuzzy Logic vs. RATW is telling. it was a huge shift in attitude.

whereas i regard Guerrilla as something like the Duck Soup or Gremlins 2 of alternative rock.

I don't know if i consider Fuzzy Logic to be classic, probably not. a lot of the b-sides are better than the songs on the album (i like Dim Bendith and Hon Ywr Gon Syn Mynd... way more than anything on Fuzzy Logic. Mario Man is the only track on it that foreshadows the classic Rhodes-driven SFA sound with swirling, processed background vocals. Out Spaced is better.

i do like Slow Life a lot, but not as much as the rest of you. i'd stopped caring by then.

Fuzzy Logic is a good record but I prefer every single album they've done since. SFA arrived pretty well-formed, but still not - crucially not - completely imo, which is why its continued popularity over several obviously better post-RATM albums (imo) comes over a bit of a disservice to me. Radiator was the advancement they needed and then Guerrilla through to Phantom Power is their peak in my ears.

For me the "reshuffling and building on their existing stylistic trademarks" is why RATM has the 'feel' of their best album. It's the confident, all-encompassing summit of an approach and doesn't miss a beat - the consciously obvious joins included. But as such it isn't lightning in a bottle and in reality it ties with Guerrilla as the one I love best.

RATW* lol

The 'we can do anything we want' rock-pop sprezzatura of RATW was my first album/non-singles exposure to sfa and it blew me away, though I totally understand the -no longer insurgents- ref by deflatormouse.

I really like Phantom Power tho not as much, and then subsequents were to me a bit deflated and uninspired versions of that.

As to Guerilla Radiator et al., I enjoy them a lot, but given my exposure point to the band, they seem mostly formative. Maybe it's like afp seemed to say, "how you see this band depends on where you came in."

As to Guerilla Radiator et al., I enjoy them a lot, but given my exposure point to the band, they seem mostly formative

ok, that actually makes a lot of sense. i could see that.

the thing is, i kinda prefer RATW over some of their later records because it still has traces of that insurgent edge, and it's totally absent in anything they did afterwards. But the softening of it was much more striking at the time than the continuity, and it put me off them. i like a few of the songs, mainly Alternate Route to Vulcan Street and Juxtapozed with U. but, though i enjoy it less, i see Love Kraft as the culmination of what they started doing here.

i think the first 3 or 4 albums are ultimately expressions of anger. however cartoonish or indirect, on some level they're "about" how to process and deal with anger. how do you bring it out into the world in a constructive way? that's the question at the heart of their cartoon mania. And then on Mwng the anger and the mania is tempered somewhat by a surprising tenderness they hadn't really shown before (disregarding Fire in My Heart because it totally sucks).

i remember something imago (i think?) said about RATW as really "going for it" in the sense that they channeled the sonic experimentation into more cohesive songs. i couldn't get my head around that, because i always thought their big, bold push to infiltrate the mainstream on Guerilla was "really going for it", and on RATW they seemed to have picked a lane made the decision to stay in their lane from then on (i get that chart positions don't necessarily tell this story).

i guess what i'm saying is yeah, i can see how the perspective changes depending on where you came in.

about arriving fully formed or not, i believe Smokin' and TMDGAF were both written and demoed before Fuzzy Logic, and it may be more a case of the song selection obfuscating their identity. i've def always thought there's a strong case to be made that it's their worst album. it's obviously not my least favorite for reasons i've already enumerated.

Also lol @ "RATM" :)

I mean, tense verse, heavy bluesy chorus, repeated use of "fuck"... "The Man Don't Give a Fuck" is basically a RATM song

Just bought this.

https://img1.wsimg.com/isteam/ip/a6f2c85b-12ea-4590-b445-f7c3dff96766/Hei%20Vidal%204000x4000%20cover%20jpeg.jpg/:/rs=w:1500,h:1500,cg:true,m/cr=w:1500,h:1500

Originally released in 1992, Hei Vidal! is the third album by revolutionary DIY Cymraeg pop band Ffa Coffi Pawb. Formed in Bethesda in 1986 by sixteen year old friends Gruff Rhys and Rhodri Puw (later joined by Gruff’s Super Furry Animals’ bandmate Dafydd Ieuan and Dewi Emlyn).

Made by a bunch of 21 and 22 year olds, Hei Vidal! is an album that distills the band’s obsessions with early ’70s power-pop (all the B’s from Bowie, Bolan and Big Star) as well as Neu! and My Bloody Valentine into a sound that predates the fuzzed out return to glam a few years later. It merges motorik grooves over saturated shoe gazing fuzz with impressionistic studio manipulation, orchestral synthesiser arrangements and brutal yet surreal imagery and word play in the Welsh language.

Having signed their songs over to a local publisher who eventually disappeared off the face of the Earth, Ffa Coffi Pawb’s music has been out of print for decades (with the exception of the 2004 compilation album Am Byth, released on the SFA associated Placid Casual label). After untangling a complicated web of time, Hei Vidal! will be available on streaming services and vinyl for the first time having only been on cassette and very few CD copies on its original release on Ankst in 1992. The reissue marks the 30th anniversary of the band’s final show at Builth Wells Memorial Hall in August 1993 (supported by a young Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci).

Single available on Spotify is p good!

Any news on the Phantom Power 20th anniversary reissue? Hoping that's coming this year.

I heard September.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbd5UthzCX4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-hRc51pvPc

Produced by the band, 'Phantom Power', celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2023,keeps a much lower profile than the band's previous work.The album, for the most part, is awash with pedal steel, acoustic guitars and vocal harmonies. But if you think the creative juices have ceased, you could barely be more wrong. Gruff Rhys' songwriting moves a step forward on 'Phantom Power', with playful story-based lyrics about turtles, mingers, ninjas and cabbages contrasting with lines about death, radiation and war. This 2LP heavyweight black vinyl deluxe reissue, with original artwork and die-cut sleeve,has been carefully remastered from the mixdown tapes and includes liner notes from the album's executive producer Kurt Stern.

cd1
1. hello sunshine
2. liberty belle
3. golden retriever
4. sex, war & robots
5. the piccolo snare
6. venus & serena
7. father father #1
8. bleed forever
9. out of control
10. cityscape skybaby
11. father father #2
12. valet parking
13. the undefeated
14. slow life
cd2
1. father father #3
2. summer snow
3. blue fruit
4. cowbird
5. sanitizzzed
6. motherfokker feat. goldie lookin chain
7. lost control
8. the man don’t give a fuck (live)
cd3
1. father father*
2. hello sunshine*
3. aluminum illuminati
4. cabbages (retitled cityscape skybaby)*
5. golden retriever*
6. hummingbird (retitled cloudberries)*
7. billy’s gone (retitled out of control)*
8. head first (retitled paddling pools)*
9. no go (retitled summer snow)*
10. father father*
11. sex, war & robots**
12. bluebird 1**
13. bluebird 2**
14. bluebird 3**
15. bluebird 4**
16. walk you home**
17. the undefeated**
18. every building has been built**
19. blue fruit**
20. valet parking**
21. valet parking***
22. out of control ***
23. paddling pools***
24. miami vice***
25. slow life***
*stiwdio ofn demo, gwanwyn 2002
**av happenings demo, chwefror 2002
***rockfield rough mix, mai 2002

Pretty wild set of demos/b-sides/whatevers. Lots of Love Kraft tracks. Out 8 September.

At the time to me it didn’t feel less creative, it felt dulled down. Tho with several great songs.