Q&A: Gruff Rhys

Three years after taking up with the Super Furry Animals, Gruff Rhys and the band released their much-lauded debut, ‘Fuzzy Logic’ in 1996. This marked the prolific quintet’s first of nine successful LPs to date, with their latest (and longest yet) album ‘Dark Days/Light Years’ emerging in 2009.
Exhibiting rough yet ready solo promise with 2005′s Welsh-spoken ‘Yr Atal Genhedlaeth’, a lone Gruff further plundered the mysterious realms of psych-experimentation with its successor ‘Candylion’, released in 2007. Playing under the moniker Neon Neon, he and US producer Boom Bip also released conceptual LP ‘Stainless Style’ that same year. Gruff has since worked with acts including Simian Mobile Disco and Gorillaz, also collaborating with Brazilian composer Tony Da Gatorra on last year’s ‘The Terror Of Cosmic Loneliness’.
Now nearing the end of a tour in support of his third solo LP ‘Hotel Shampoo’, Gruff’s biggest ever solo show will take place this evening at London’s Shepherds Bush Empire. His latest single ‘Whale Trail’, which is taken from the soundtrack to an app-based iPhone game of the same name, is due out on 20 Oct. Ahead of all that, CMU Editor Andy Malt caught up with him for some chat...

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Photo by Lauren Laverne