Gruff Rhys didn’t mean to make a political record. He just wanted to make a simple acoustic album. Naturally, it turned into a South African-electronic-Welsh-language-pop remix LP about globalism in a post-Brexit world.
“I ended up going on a recording trip to Johannesburg,” Rhys says, with the casual tone of someone who popped down the street for milk. “I didn’t think much of it… then suddenly we’re remixing the whole thing.”
The album is called Pang, a collaboration with South African producer Muzi, who took Rhys’ stripped-down guitar recordings and built something entirely new around them. “We took this record, reassembled everything into loops, and reconstructed it,” he says. “It’s basically a remix album of something no one ever heard.”
If that sounds chaotic, it’s not. Pang is joyful, unpredictable, and wildly melodic. The track “Bae Bae Bae” bumps with Afrobeat-adjacent rhythms while Rhys croons in pure Welsh. The fusion is disorienting in the best way. “I wanted to make a futuristic record that still centered around me and a guitar,” he says. “Something rooted in my city, Cardiff, but reflective of the wider world.”
And that world is increasingly hostile to, well, the wider world. “It’s crucial in this period that we build bridges,” Rhys says, drawing a line between his cross-cultural collaborations and Brexit’s nationalist wall-building. “Certain politicians are trying to destroy them.”
Rhys sees Pang as a spiritual cousin to Guerrilla, the Super Furry Animals album that turns 20 this year. “That record was trying to engage with where technology was taking us,” he says. “Pang is in a similar tradition. I wanted Welsh language in a futuristic setting. Not as some kind of nostalgic melancholy, but optimistic.”
He admits the irony of singing in one of the least globally spoken languages while trying to foster unity. But he’s not sweating it. “The power of melody and emotion is enough, usually,” he shrugs. And if people want the lyrics, they’re welcome to go digging.
Besides, language barriers didn’t stop Muzi. “He speaks six languages and was like, ‘Yeah, this is great. Let’s keep it in Welsh,’” Rhys laughs. “That sort of encouragement meant a lot.”
With talk of Welsh independence, Facebook-targeted propaganda, and crumbling media watchdogs, it’s hard not to read Pang as a protest record. Rhys won’t deny the subtext. “It’s distressing,” he says of the moment. “But it’s also a time for conversation.”
And somewhere inside that conversation is a beautiful, weird, multilingual guitar-pop album that sounds like the future we keep failing to reach.
Listen to the interview above and then check out the videos below.
