The legendary Gruff Rhys returns with 'Dim Probs', his ninth solo album, fourth Welsh language long player, and first release through Rock Action Records.

Featuring fellow Welsh artists Cate Le Bon and H. Hawkline on backing vocals, and produced with Ali Chant (Yard Act/PJ Harvey), 'Dim Probs' echoes the warmth and closeness of Gruff’s career defining first solo album (2005’s 'Yr Atal Genhedlaeth') and the stargazing melancholy of 2021’s 'Seeking New Gods'. Written and performed entirely in Welsh/Cymraeg, 'Dim Probs' places the listener side by side with one of the country’s greatest and most thoughtful songwriters in the corner of a studio as the songs grow around them from just voice and guitar. The result is an intimate and hypnotic record that mixes acoustic folk with whatever scratchy, primitive electronic machines come to hand on each track. One listen? Dim probs indeed!

TRACK LISTING

1. Pan Ddaw’r Haul I Fore
2. Cân I’r Cymylau
3. Saf Ar Dy Sedd
4. Taro #1 + #2
5. Dos Amdani
6. Chwyn Chwyldroadol!
7. Cyflafan
8. Dim Probs
9. Adar Gwyn
10. Gadael Fi Fynd
11. Slaw
12. Acw

In 2012 Gruff Rhys embarked on a solo 'investigative concert tour' through the heart of America following the route taken by his distant relative John Evans. Every night he presented songs augmented by a power point presentation that detailed his relative's unbelievable history, along with any new piece of information that had come his way during the day. He was ultimately looking for Evans's lost unmarked grave. Along with many major cities, the tour took him to play shows at the Mandan and Omaha tribe reservations, a Missouri vineyard, villages that no longer exist and lay at the bottom the Mississippi river and a New Orleans bordello.

What transpired from that ‘investigative concert tour’ was a 2014 album, 'American Interior', plus a book, film and exhaustive tour of the same name. With the aid of the dusted-off power point presentation, Gruff Rhys and a full band revisits the project in 2025 to perform the songs that formed both the album, and the soundtrack to the film.

TRACK LISTING

1. American Exterior
2. American Interior
3-The Whether (Or Not)
4-The Last Conquistador
5-Lost Tribes
6-Liberty (Is Where We'll Be)
7. Allweddellau Allweddol
8. Walk Into The Wilderness
9. Sugar Insides
10. 100 Unread Messages
11. That's Why
12. The Swamp
13. Media Quake
14. Cylchdro Amser
15. Iolo
16. Y Gwenan Gorn
17. Year Of The Dog
18. Tiger's Tale
19. I Grombil Cyfandir Pell (3LP Deluxe Only)
20. Ar Goll (3LP Deluxe Only)
21. Y Madogwys Neu Angau (3LP Deluxe Only)
22. Power Point Presentation (3LP Deluxe Only)
23.  American Exterior (Extended Version For Two Synthesizers) (3LP Deluxe Only)

Incredibly, “Sadness Sets Me Free” is the 25th album Gruff Rhys has released in his 35 year career individually, collaboratively and as a member of various bands. “Sadness Sets Me Free” is also the follow up to 2021’s “Seeking new Gods”, his first solo top ten record.

Lead-off single “Celestial Candyfloss” is a telling four minute glimpse of the forthcoming album, revealing the heady wonders and classic pop sounds within. Soaring strings carry the sweet melodies along, anchored by just enough necessary melancholy to add emotional ballast. The eye-popping video was created by long-time collaborator Mark James and compliments the scope and style of the song on a galactic scale.

“Celestial Candyfloss” is, Gruff says, “an attempted pocket symphony about the cosmic lengths that people will travel in the pursuit of love and acceptance. Mark James has brought the Sadness Sets Me Free album cover to life & managed to place me watching TV interference in a shipping container that’s lost in space. For what is apparently the 25th album I’ve had a hand in writing I’ve reverted to a rich seam of inspiration relating to shedding some light on sadness and the general terror of cosmic loneliness.”

And so it was that Gruff and his band – Osian Gwynedd (piano), Huw V Williams (double bass) and former Flaming Lips drummer turned Super Furry Animals archivist Kliph Scurlock (drums) piled into a van driven by the late, legendary tour manager “Dr” Kiko Loiacono and raced from Dunkirk, where they had just played the final show of a tour of Spain and France, to the outskirts of Paris in the early hours of a March morning in 2022. There, in La Frette Studios, a recording facility installed in a 19th-century house, Gruff and his road-hardened group tracked “Sadness Sets Me Free” in just three days. Backing vocals were added along the way by Kate Stables from This Is The Kit along with additional strings and orchestration and it was mixed between Marseille and Cardiff. What finally emerged from these intense bouts of cross-continental activity was Gruff’s most accomplished and beautiful record to date.

In a career that has taken him from the slate-mining towns of north-west Wales, down to the expat communities of Patagonia, up to the Mandan tribe of the Great Plains of North America and across to the Tuareg rock groups of the Saharan Desert, Gruff Rhys, one of Britain’s most beloved and successful singer-songwriters, has always been willing to follow an opportunity, wherever it may lead him. “At this point I quite like working with serendipity,” he says. “Not in a cosmic way, [but] I try and leave things open to chance encounters and chance geography. As I'm around 25 albums in I’m always looking for ways to make a different-sounding record”.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Gruff is one of the masters of musical disguiuse, effortlessly turning his hand to any number of genre leanings, but it's in effortlessly melodic albums like 'Sadness Sets Me Free' that we get to hear the true genius and uplifting glee that only he can bring. There are moments of orchestral majesty and brittle, tentative sadness but every moment is a delight. A reminder of why Gruff is one of the greatest songwriters of our times.

TRACK LISTING

1. Sadness Sets Me Free
2. Bad Friend
3. Celestial Candyfloss
4. Silver Lining (Lead Balloons)
5. On The Far Side Of The Dollar
6. They Sold My Home To Build A Skyscraper
7. Peace Signs
8. Cover Up The Cover Up
9. I Tendered My Resignation
10. I’ll Keep Singing

Dinked Edition Bonus 7”:
A. Amser
B. (etching, No Audio)

This 22-track album comprises original songs and instrumental score, all composed by Gruff Rhys. Recorded between 2021-2022 with a host of featured musicians including members of the National of Orchestra Wales, the music features throughout the forthcoming film of the same name, starring Charlotte Gainsbourg, Rebel Wilson and Celyn Jones.

Set for release in early 2023, the film tells the story of archaeologist (Rebel Wilson) and an architect (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and their fight to re-imagine a future after a traumatic brain injury leaves them adrift from the people they love. The title of the film itself refers to the nicknames given to the parts of our brains that lay down new memories and hold on to the old ones.

Tonally, the soundtrack compliments the movie perfectly: the drama of the subject matter and the human relationships is counterbalanced by the film’s wry humour and lightness of touch, and the varied compositions and styles on Gruff Rhys’ score and compositions reflects that. “The soundtrack for The Almond & The Seahorse was recorded largely in pandemic conditions so it was a matter of recording in bursts of possible activity in various friends’ studios, homes and even scout halls as chance permitted. It’s a varied quilt work as a result. “Gruff notes. “As sonic flagpoles I wanted to signify the film’s location in Liverpool and the Wirral by liberally, but hopefully not too obviously, using the Mellotron synthesizer (as famously used in Strawberry Fields by the Beatles & therefore in my mind it represents that great city sonically) and the Cello as a nod to its use by Gwen’s character in the film.”

“I was encouraged by Mike Jones the editor to take things to a more acoustic, emotional and ragged place. That, I hope, roughly explains the trajectory of the recording and how the varied music contained in this record came about. I hope you enjoy this colorful scrapbook of a soundtrack and get a chance to watch the film”.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Gruff Rhys is equally comfortable crafting grand, uplifting melodies and melodic guitar-based pop as he is brittle, minimalistic soundtracks. The Almond & The Seahorse is a tender work of emotional depth and further proves Rhys' almost unrivalled capacity as a musical chameleon.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Skyward
The Brain And The Body
People Are Pissed
Layer Upon Layer
Orea

Side B
Joe's Theme
Sunshine And Laughter Ever After
Variation With Strings
Amen
Low Cello
Liberate Me From The Love Song
Love Love Love

Side C
I Want My Old Life Back
Forest Waltz
Dance All Your Shadows To Death
Library To Kiss
Staccato With Cello
Small Talk

Side D
Toni’s Theme
Ffenestr
Penbedw
Arogldarth

Gruff Rhys is releasing his new album “Seeking New Gods” through Rough Trade Records on 21st May. This will be Gruff’s seventh solo album. “Seeking New Gods” was recorded following a US tour with his band and mixed in LA with superstar producer Mario C (Beastie Boys).

The album concept was originally driven to be the biography of a mountain, Mount Paektu (an East Asian active volcano). However, as Gruff’s writing began to reflect on the inhuman timescale of a peak’s existence and the intimate features that bring it to mythological life, both the songs and the mountain became more and more personal.

“The album is about people and the civilisations, and the spaces people inhabit over periods of time. How people come and go but the geology sticks around and changes more slowly. I think it’s about memory and time,” he suggests of Seeking New Gods’ meaning. “It’s still a biography of a mountain, but now it’s a Mount Paektu of the mind. You won’t learn much about the real mountain from listening to this record but you will feel something, hopefully.” - Gruff Rhys.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Gruff returns for yet another faultless slab of widescreen cinematic pop, full of his warmingly familiar but endlessly inventive chord progressions and swoon-inducing vocal drawl. Optimistic but filled with more introspective moments among the otherwise bombastic stomp. It's as dizzying and perfect as anything he's ever done. Peak Gruff.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Mausoleum Of My Former Self
2. Can’t Carry On
3. Loan Your Loneliness
4. Seeking New Gods
5. Hiking In Lightning
Side B
1. Holiest Of The Holy Of The Holy Men
2. The Keep
3. Everlasting Joy
4. Distant Snowy Peaks

Dinked Edition Flexi Disc
Tropical Messiah

The new album from Gruff Rhys, ‘Pang!’ is a Welsh Language pop album with a couple of verses of Zulu and an English title. ‘Pang!’ developed unexpectedly over about 18 months. A solo album of songs by Gruff Rhys, produced & mixed by the South African electronic artist Mmusi, and will be released by Rough Trade Records.

Recorded in Cardiff, Wales. It was mixed by the producer Muzi in Johannesburg, South Africa. Drums by Welsh-American psychedelic warlord Kliph Scurlock, brass by Gavin Fitzjohn and flute and percussion by the engineer Kris Jenkins. Beats, bass & ah’s by Muzi with Gruff on vocals and guitar.

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, listing 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.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: There is no more distinctive a voice in modern indie than Gruff, with his impeccable grasp of melody and seamless integration of welsh vocals, dynamic percussion and classic songwriting. Another absolute classic, and an absolutely lovely chap to boot. Perfect.

TRACK LISTING

1. Pang!
2. Bae Bae Bae
3. Digidigol
4. Ara Deg
5. Eli Haul
6. Niwl O Anwiredd
7. Taranau Mai
8. Oi Bys Nodau Clust
9. Annedd Im Danedd

Babelsberg is the fifth album by Gruff Rhys, his first record for Rough Trade since 2007’s classic Candylion. The album features orchestral scores by Swansea based composer Stephen McNeff and the incredible work of the 72 piece BBC National Orchestra of Wales. The result is Gruff’s best record to date - a ten song gazetteer of modern times, each track set to timeless, indelible melody. Amazingly, for a collection of songs written over two years ago, each one seems to pull very sharp focus on the times we’re living in.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: The legendary Gruff Rhys kills it once again for his newest outing, Babelsberg. Orchestral, nuanced and oozing with Gruff's singular vocal drawl, encompassing all aspects of his previous works and pulling together into a cohesive and essential whole.

TRACK LISTING

Frontier Man
The Club
Oh Dear!
Limited Edition Heart
Take That Call
Drones In The City
Negative Vibes
Same Old Song
Architecture Of Amnesia
Selfies In The Sunset

"Candylion" was the second solo album from Gruff Rhys. Now released on vinyl for the first time in the UK, it's a mesmerising musical journey. It seems fitting therefore that insight into the workings behind the album come straight from the man himself:

'"Candylion" took form in the spring of 2006 over a fragmented two week period at Gorwel Owen's Ofn studio in Llanfaelog, Wales. My ears were happily ringing from a few months touring with the Super Furry Animals and I had a batch of mellower acoustic songs I wanted to record quickly and get out of the way before the next speaker-blowing SFA record. Once in the studio however I got carried away and found myself in a nostalgic mood, pining for some of the music I grew up listening to.'

TRACK LISTING

A.1 - This Is Just The Beginning
A.2 - Candylion
A.3 - The Court Of King Arthur
A.4 - Lonsome Words
A.5 - Cycle Of Violence
A.6 - Painting People Blue
B.1. - Beacon Of Darkness
B.2 - Con Carino
B.3 - Gyrru Gyrru Gyrru
B.4 - Now That The Feeling Has Gone
B.5 - Ffwydriad Yn Y Ffurfafen
C.1 Skylon!
D - Etched..

"Candylion" is the new solo album from Gruff Rhys. It follows the single of the same name and is a mesmerising musical journey with one of our most talented singers and songwriters. It seems fitting therefore that insight into the workings behind the album come straight from the man himself. '"Candylion" took form in the spring of 2006 over a fragmented two week period at Gorwel Owen's Ofn studio in Llanfaelog, Wales. My ears were happily ringing from a few months touring with the Super Furry Animals and I had a batch of mellower acoustic songs I wanted to record quickly and get out of the way before the next speaker-blowing SFA record. Once in the studio however I got carried away and found myself in a nostalgic mood, pining for some of the music I grew up listening to.'