Super Furry Animals' Gruff Rhys Records with Instrument-Inventing TV Repairman

Super Furry Animals frontman Gruff Rhys met Tony Da Gatorra (pictured above), a Brazilian TV repairman, while in South America making a road trip movie called Seperado!. Though the two men didn’t speak the same language, they began rehearsing together for a live show in Sao Paulo. “We spent five days rehearsing a set of songs to play live at the venue—our only shared language was music itself so there was no small talk, just intense concentration on the music,” Rhys recently told Spinner. “On the final day, as the rehearsals had been so productive, we hooked up some recording equipment and took about five hours out to make this record. We recorded several live takes of each song then chose the best versions. I added a harmony vocal overdub on two songs, otherwise it’s pretty much what we recorded at the time.”

The result of those recordings is The Terror Of Cosmic Loneliness, an album that will see limited release this summer. It features Da Gatorra on an instrument he invented called—what else—the “Gatorra,” a hybrid of guitar, drum machine and synthesizer. De Gatorra told Spinner that the record “was made with lots of feelings and true love to bring consciousness and show a little bit of truth that needs to be said without hypocrisy. We are creatures of God, so there’s no death. Spirit is light, all evil won’t prevail.” The duo will bring their truth to a handful of U.K. stages at the end of July.

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