March 21

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Welsh songwriter and musician Gruff Rhys has consistently explored the potential of the song as an opportunity for wider cultural chaos. Starting out as a teenage songwriter in fuzzy Welsh language outlaws Ffa Coffi Pawb he then formed Super Furry Animals – a band able to achieve that rarest of mixes, artistic adventure with popular devotion on a global scale. As half of electro duo Neon Neon, Rhys has documented the lives of maverick car maker John DeLorean and Italian activist and publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli in hi-concept widescreen biographical albums and shows.

His twenty-year solo career has followed a variety of musical and thematic paths that combine melodic richness & intricate guitar playing, subverted by deft lyricism and wordplay. Rhys’ Candylion album was adapted into a successful stage play and his 2014 album American Interior conceived jointly as a feature film and book. He has soundtracked multiple films, most recently 2022’s “The Almond and the Seahorse” starting Rebel Wilson and Charlotte Gainsbourg. His seventh and most recent solo album released by Rough Trade records, Seeking New Gods, became his most commercially successful solo album yet reaching the top 10 in the UK charts.

In 2022, Rhys’s collaborators in Tuareg band Imarhan released their LP Aboogi, and in 2023 Gruff Rhys produced album Careful of Your Keepers by This is the Kit. He is currently working on a soundtrack for the stage play of Oliver Jeffers’s book Lost and Found for Manchester’s new arts venue, Factory International.

Whether through his music, collaborations or his multimedia projects, Rhys continues to inspire audiences worldwide with his boundless creativity and unwavering commitment to artistic exploration through the medium of song.

@gruffingtonpost