Gruff Rhys announces Dublin headline show to celebrate upcoming album

Welsh musician, composer, producer, filmmaker and author Gruff Rhys has announced his highly-anticipated return to Dublin's Liberty Hall Theatre on October 30th, 2021.

Rhys announced the gig to celebrating his upcoming seventh solo studio album Seeking New Gods through Rough Trade Records, due for release on May 21st.

Seeking New Gods was recorded after a US tour with his band, Super Furry Animals, and mixed in LA with renowned producer Mario C (Beastie Boys).

The typically beautiful art direction is by long-time collaborator Mark James and the record will feature a Mountain Die Cut envelope-style sleeve, numbered Belly band, two-colour Splatter Vinyl, Flexi Disc and a 10” signed print.

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," Gruff says of the new LP.

"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.”

In 2005, Rhys released his first solo album, Yr Atal Genhedlaeth, on the Placid Casual label. Candylion followed in 2007, before 2011's Hotel Shampoo and 2014's American Interior.

"The monochrome in the visuals has made it look much sharper and stylish (for want of a better word - I don’t think I know what style is!) like a Japanese 60’s pop show or something!" he adds of the videos.

"We added a layer of cloud to add some spot colour and to integrate the album sleeve aesthetic to the video. The colour was always stronger at the very end - I don’t particularly like the brown slippery dinosaurs but love the mammoths and northern lights.... so we bought it back to colour by the end - the narrative being that a soloing guitarist accidentally invented colour TV with sheer exuberance!"

Part of Gruff’s creative remit has always been about pushing the boundaries of how music is presented and performed, starting with the quadraphonic sound system tours as part of Super Furry Animals.

For his latest solo record, Gruff partnered with the BBC’s R&D department to make use of their Audio Orchestrator technology to create an at-home, multi-device immersive listening experience for fans. It will mark the first time the BBC has offered this technology for use with an album.

Pre-order Seeking New Gods here.