Frontman of legendary Welsh band Super Furry Animals and Mercury-nominated outfit Neon Neon, Gruff Rhys will play a special full band show at The Town Hall, Llangollen on Saturday, 7th December presented by FOCUS Wales and Clwb Ifor Bach.
The show follows the release of Gruff’s new solo album Pang! which was released in September. ‘Pang’ is a pop album with a couple of verses of Zulu and an English title. Developed unexpectedly over about 18 months, ‘Pang!’ was produced and mixed by the South African electronic artist Muzi.
Muzi has captured the attention of critically-acclaimed artists, such as Diplo, Stormzy and Damon Albarn, with his sounds that combine Afrobeat, hip-hop, electronic music, kwaito and other genres, including some that are local to South Africa. Muzi will be joining Gruff on tour as part of his live band.
As Gruff explains, “Pang!” is a Welsh language song with an English title. It started life as a folk reel and soon expanded into a ‘list’ song, describing various reasons for pangs; hunger, regret, twitter, pain, bad design, etc. Using the English word pang in a Welsh language track may appear weird, but I suppose it’s like using the French word ‘Magazine’ in an English song in that it’s slightly pretentious but completely acceptable.”
Tickets are £20 and available via Gigantic Tickets and the FOCUS Wales website.
Tickets to all FOCUS Wales events are available now at focuswales.com/tickets.
FOCUS Wales is supported by The Arts Council of Wales and The Welsh Government.