Super Furry Animals, Manchester

Super Furry Animals biography

Super Furry Animals (also known as "SFA", the "Furries" and the "Super Furries") is a Welsh alternative rock band, with leanings towards psychedelic rock, punk, britpop and electronic experimentation. Recording sessions took place in a chateau in the south of France in 2007 for the band's first release for Rough Trade, Hey Venus!, which was released on August 27 that year. The record was a step back from Love Kraft, and is very much in the vein of the band's late-90s' records. Gruff himself described the record as "speaker blowing". The album's first single, "Show Your Hand", failed to enter the top 40, their first to do so since 1996's "Hometown Unicorn", despite modest airplay. The album itself faired much better, peaking at #11 and was a slight improvement from the sales of Love Kraft. The album became their first to enter the iTunes Music Store top 10 album charts, peaking no higher than #9. Over the 2007 christmas period SFA released the christmas single "The Gift That Keeps Giving" free from their website. For the album artwork for "Hey Venus!" the band tracked down the (in 2007) 82 year old Japanese artist Keiichi Tanaami to replace the album artwork of Pete Fowler's with whom the band had had, what Gruff in an interview with Pitchfork called, 'a blood pact' to make their cover sleeve artwork for 10 years. Although Gruff didn't actually know if Tanaami was still alive, he had been a fan of his works for many years. Gruff also stated in the earlier mentioned interview that Tanaami apparently had been known to be one of the first people in Japan to take acid in the 60s, and that coincided with the first pizza parlor opening in Tokyo. So Tanaami used to go into this pizza parlor and look at all the different color combinations from the toppings and have a psychedelic experience.

When

Where