Rise of The Super Furry Animals. Ric Rawlins

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СКАЧАТЬ other teachers at school, however, viewed Bunf with suspicion – and the feeling was mutual. Organised religion and discipline were the twin forks of the school’s philosophy, with the deputy heads in particular displaying an evangelical streak. It wasn’t the religion that bothered Bunf, however; more the school’s insistence that religion alone could save kids from a life of poverty. ‘We were in a really hard, deprived area which had this enormous lack of hope,’ says Bunf, ‘and it was inadequate to suggest that it’d be OK if you followed that path. The kids were beyond that.’

      When possible Gruff and Daf would catch the teacher in action with U Thant, and it wasn’t long before they got to know another member of the group who seemed a like-minded kind of person: Guto Pryce, their dark-haired, square-jawed bass player.

       FURRY FILE: GUTO

      BORN – Cardiff, 1972

      CHILDHOOD DISASTER – ‘Having to make do with a hand-me-down pink Raleigh Commando bike instead of a BMX’

      CHILDHOOD VICTORY – ‘Bunnyhopping that Commando’

      BAD BEHAVIOUR – Cross-country running fraud

      TEEN REBEL ICON – Diego Maradona

      TEEN GROOMING TIP – Dungarees

      GEEK SPECIALITY – Oink! comic

      FIRST SONGWRITING ATTEMPT – ‘Mynd Am Dro’, 1978 (‘It was basically a rip-off of a Welsh song about two dogs that go for a walk in the woods and lose a shoe’)

      BEACH BOYS VALHALLA – ‘Big Sur’

      LIFE WISDOM – ‘Bunf once told me: “Don’t eat anything bigger than your head”’

      Guto had grown up on a diet of punk and melodic pop, supplied to him respectively by The Damned and ELO. His earliest encounter with the bass guitar was watching the French TV superstar Jean-Jacques Burnel, who not only played bass, but also knew karate; very cool indeed.

      Like Gruff, Guto’s adventures in rock and roll started early. ‘It’s funny,’ he says today, ‘I don’t think you can do it now, but back then you could start a band and easily get on TV, then pick up a cheque for £140 at the end of the day. So you’d form bands just to get on telly, earn a bit of money.’

      After a couple of years playing Ramones covers in a garage band, Guto signed up for U Thant. For some time the group enjoyed playing the ‘rock ’n’ squat’ scenes of Eastern Europe, and at just seventeen years old found themselves playing in the former East Germany. ‘It was quite nuts really,’ says Guto, ‘and an eye-opener when you’re seventeen. We were playing to a bunch of Iron Maiden fans every night, classic punk rockers – they’d seen Camden Town on a postcard and thought “I want to be zis!”’

      At the dawn of 1991, U Thant were comfortably nestled in their home town of Cardiff. However, before their counterparts in Ffa Coffi Pawb could join them, a brief geographical diversion was about to occur: Manchester.

      Gruff and Daf moved to the city of dance music together, in an attempt to kick-start their art educations at the university. To their delight, the acid house scene was in full bloom – and for a few months they embarked on a hedonistic holiday in the ‘second summer of love’, checking out the 24-hour nightclubs and casually noting the latest techno sounds.

      Yet Daf soon became contemplative and, disillusioned with art education and spooked by the suspicion that he was neglecting his one true calling, music, he decided to move back to Cardiff. Although the move separated him from his best friend, it was a pivotal decision: the flat he was moving into would shortly become the arts lab of the Super Furry Animals.

      Daf unpacked his bags on the wooden floors of 12 Column Road, Cardiff on 5 June 1993. Moving in alongside him were his girlfriend Debbie, Rhys Ifans, and Rhys’s strange Polish girlfriend who enjoyed shoplifting. Before they could get round to settling in, however, the phone rang. It was Bunf.

      ‘We were thinking about taking some acid, and then going to watch the dinosaurs at the museum,’ he said. ‘Would you like to come along?’

      Daf put the phone down and smiled at his girlfriend. ‘Fucking ’ell, I think I like this guy!’

      That night, the acid was far too strong, forcing them to walk very slowly and carefully back to Bunf’s flat, under the watchful eye of strange lights emanating from the traffic. Inside, Daf switched on the living-room light to reveal a labyrinthine city of guitar-effects pedals on the floor. They had entered Bunf’s space-rock HQ.

      ‘Pedals,’ whispered Daf, pointing at the floor, the wall, then the ceiling too. ‘Pedals,’ he repeated. ‘Everywhere!’

      It was Cardiff’s hottest summer for twenty years, and the surf was definitely up: living in the capital, Daf got to sample the countryside raves that were exploding in its satellite countryside. There was also an additional benefit to living in the city: he got to hang out with his younger brother, Cian – a film student living up the road in Newport.

       FURRY FILE: CIAN

      BORN – Bangor, 1976

      SUPERPOWER – Flight

      SUPERWEAKNESS – Sleep deprivation

      CHILDHOOD DISASTER – ‘I was caught with my trousers around my ankles in primary school, when the fire alarm went off. I had to go on yard in my pants and all had a good laugh at my expense’

      CHILDHOOD VICTORY – ‘Winning the Albert Owen shield with Pentraeth FC’

      BAD BEHAVIOUR – ‘I never got caught!’

      REBEL ICON – Diego Maradona

      TEENAGE GROOMING TIP – Eyeliner

      GEEK DISCLOSURE – Lego

      FIRST ATTEMPTED SONG – ‘I remember recording myself doing raspberries into the tape machine when I was about six years old’

      BEACH BOYS VALHALLA – ‘Forever’

      Cian was too young to go raving, but he was nonetheless an acid house fan. One track that proved particularly influential to the young teenager was the Snowman mix of ‘Humanoid’ – in part a rave version of The Snowman soundtrack – by an early incarnation of The Future Sound of London.

      With Orbital also making regular appearances on the turntables, it was only a matter of time until Cian started to make his own dance music, making his earliest recordings onto DAT tapes. As Cian explains today, it was a time of experimentation and creation.

      ‘I had this teacher who’d say something like “Ideas are a penny apiece, it’s how you execute them that makes them special.” Which was frustrating at the time because I thought all my ideas were worth something, and it seemed like he brought you right down: anyone can have an idea! But it influenced me from that point on, not to get hung up on an idea – the next one would always be better, and if you get a good one and execute it well … that’s where the magic is.’

      By the time Cian had started СКАЧАТЬ