Gruff Rhys has announced details of his new album, entitled Babelsberg. Above, you can watch the video for lead track ‘Frontier Man’.
The album’s release marks his return to Rough Trade as his first solo album to be released by the label in a decade, following on from 2007’s Candylion.
Babelsberg‘s 10 tracks were initially recorded in early 2016 during a three-day session that took place before producer Ali Chant’s studio was demolished. The band he gathered for the sessions consisted of his regular drummer Kliph Scurlock (ex-Flaming Lips) and multi-instrumentalists Stephen Black (Sweet Baboo) and Osian Gwynedd.
The tracks were then set aside for 18 months, awaiting additional orchestral scores by Swansea-based composer Stephen McNeff as well as work from the 72-piece BBC National Orchestra of Wales.
"I’d made a note of the name after driving past a sign when I was on tour in 2014," says Rhys. "Cut to a few years later and the studio where I recorded the album was being knocked down just a week after I finished to make way for a ‘luxury’ apartment development. I was looking for a name that evoked the Tower of Babel – people building towers to reach an idea of heaven (but maybe creating a kind of hell – I’m an atheist by the way!) In any case I had written Babelsberg down and when I listened to the songs together, it finally made sense why I’d done that."
Babelsberg is out on June 8.
