Idiosyncratic Welsh popsters Super Furry Animals will reveal more than just a visual accompaniment to their new album “Rings Around the World” on July 23, when they release the album simultaneously on DVD and CD (via Epic in the U.K. and Europe).
The DVD version of SFA’s fifth record will provide fans with almost half an album’s worth of extra tracks which were recorded during the “Rings” sessions, but didn’t make it onto the audio-only version of the finished product. DVD users will also be able to access short clips made by various independent filmmakers for each of the album’s tracks, as well as six additional films for the unreleased songs.
“We made about 18 films before we selected tracks for the album, so we left about six of them off,” vocalist/guitarist Gruff Rhys tells Billboard.com. “Some of them are my favorite songs, but they just didn’t fit in to the final plan.”
In addition to the DVD, the group is taking many interesting approaches to promoting the new album, which is the follow-up to 2000’s Welsh-language effort “Mwng” (Placid Casual). SFA recently performed a series of “Furry Mania” promotional shows throughout the U.K., at which the band played sets of old material followed by sets that focused on the songs from “Rings.” For the former, the group wrote down all its song titles on tiny balls, and drew them at random from a bingo machine to determine the playing order.
“It was kind of a weekend event,” Rhys said. “In the night, we played a surround-sound concert with a lot of the new material, and the night before we showed the film and held a club night.”
Rhys said the group plans to take that unique gig format to Japan and Europe soon, and hopefully touch down in North America for some shows later this year. SFA is currently shopping around for a U.S. label deal to release “Rings.”
The first single from the new album, “Juxtapozed With U,” was released Monday in the U.K., and is expected to challenge for the top spot on the U.K. singles chart next week.
