Super Furry Animals Interview - Part 2

FUZZY POLITICS

AR: In your live shows, you sample Bill Hicks ranting that “All governments are liars and murderers”. Is the impulse to react to politics a big part of your lives?

GR: When we were growing up it was probably a bigger part of our lives - it was part of the area we grew up in - but since then... it’s touring in bands, it’s um… we’ve become more hedonistic, possibly. But we’ve maintained some of our core beliefs. Arguably. Ha ha!

AR: You and Guto went to Columbia, didn’t you?

GR: Yeahhh… we were approached by War On Want to do an acoustic show for a festival there. I like War On want because they’re not affiliated or tarnished by religion, where as a lot of charities - who I’m sure do lots of good work - are governed by some kind of religious belief. So we were very happy to go up there and do a gig. And it took us to meet lots of trade unionists that worked in various sectors including the union of beverages – workers of the beverage industry and soft drinks industry. And we got to hear very harrowing tales of how a lot of these people and their families were being hounded by paramilitary groups, paid for by Coca Cola franchises. Which is how Coca Cola wipe their hands clean of a lot of trouble… caused in their name, because they franchise everything out.

AR: They hire out independent militia?

GR: … working on behalf of the franchised pop industry. But I mean, we went there on the back of a 5 week US tour, and then went to Mexico City to DJ because it was on the way down, then went to Columbia for a week and got taken to see a lot of people displaced by the Civil war. And then we went to areas where there was a kind of active Civil war going on, and there were some people from a village where there was a recent massacre… all in all it was pretty harrowing!

DRAWING RINGS AROUND THE RECORD SLEEVES

AR: This is the first record in ten years without artwork by Pete Fowler. Was that a conscious decision, and will SFA get back with him one day?

GR: Well… we made a blood pact with Pete ten years ago that we wouldn’t be making records in ten years time… yet here we are! It’s very problematic because Pete’s a genius, but not only that - he’s also a very enthusiastic human being. He’s made hundreds of images for us, so hopefully we can make a book or something. I don’t know if there’s any publishers reading this, thinking it would be good idea to make a Super Furry Animals book…Anyway! It was a bit of a tall order to find someone else. Because the decision wasn’t to go with another artist it was…

AR: To give Pete a break?

GR: Well yeah… but, I mean we’re big fans of Keichi Tanamai (the ‘Hey Venus!’ sleeve artist). He was apparently one of the first Japanese people to publicly confess to taking LSD, which coincided with the opening of the first pizza parlours in Tokyo – in the ‘60s. He used to go into the pizza parlour and stare at all the different toppings, and get inspired to make psychedelic screen prints. So it’s been very interesting, er… getting in touch with him through lawyers and interpreters.

AR: The sea imagery suits ‘Hey Venus!’ – songs like ‘Show Your Hand’ are very surfy.

GR: Yeah it is quite West Coast… and he’s created a big seascape for the gatefold sleeve. It opens up and carries on, full of these quite sinister, grotesque gargoyles of the sea, and mermaids and DEVILS! This sort of devil jumping out of the sea with ‘Devils’ written on his chest – which is how we know it’s a devil… ha ha! I don’t know what he’s seen in the record but he’s obviously lived with it for a while…

SURFIN' THE CB RADIO WAVES

AR: I wanted to ask you about a song called ‘Citizens Band’ which used heavily coded language – can you explain that?

GR: It was the first song we recorded for ‘Guerrilla’. We’d always been heavily into CB radio culture as a kid. I think one of my best mates dads used to sell CB radios in a market stall.

AR: What is a CB radio, sorry?

GR: It’s like a radio that American truckers used to communicate. But it became a sort of (Welsh) cult, in the early ‘80s, where you’d have a CB radio in your house and you could speak with your friends over the valley. But you had to have a code: you could only speak in code. So for example, you’d get really short pale men in the North Wales village where I’m from, and their CB radio name would be ‘Black Stallion!’

AR: Is that where the coded secret dictionary on the inner sleeve of ‘Guerrilla’ came from?

GR Yeah! That’s where the whole lyrics of ‘Citizens Band’ came from- CB radio stands for Citizens Band radio – it was actually illegal in the UK so it was very underground and ‘hard’ if you’re on the CB. Then I think they allowed some frequencies in the end because there was so much of it. So all that song’s written in CB jargon, and then there’s a little glossary so you can translate the meanings.

AR: I had the album for about a year before I even discovered that song.

GR: Ahh fantastic… ahhh! We were very conscious. We were consciously trying to make a very short record, a very poppy record, and we ended up leaving out a lot of very nice songs which were more traditional. And we went for the more poppy, shiny and adventurous songs.

THE FUTURE IS NOT RETRO

AR: Do you feel more relaxed now that you’re on Rough Trade as opposed to Sony?

GR: Um… Sony was very relaxing also. It was almost to the point of indifference, by the end. Where we were left to do what the hell we wanted to, which is fantastic in some respects. They took a risk in signing us and letting us record the albums of our dreams you know? And really experiment with recording techniques and studios and film, which we couldn’t have done on a smaller label.

AR: On the new album there’s a phrase ‘The future ‘aint what it could have been’ – which is interesting considering the retro nature of a lot of music that’s come out in this decade.

GR: Yeah, We’re in danger of becoming a heritage rock band ourselves… but hopefully the five of us think so rashly and reactionary… that, you know, we’ll always snap out of it.

AR: Do you think that you’ll be revisiting drum n bass again in the future?

GR: Well a drum n bass record would be retro as well! When we make records the five of us are very opinionated in terms of the arrangements of songs, and we all throw ideas in. So we never really know how the record is going to turn out until we’ve finished it. Which is part of the adventure: sometimes you think you’re making a really progressive record, and then we finish it and it’s “ah, it’s actually quite a traditional record”… that’s how it turns out - there’s no dominant member who can steer in any particular direction.

Read part one here