Super Furry Animals

The Super Furry Animals bring their Surround Sound System to Birmingham, a system that, like Leftfield, has had as much critical acclaim in equal measures over both their music and their audio hardware!

The cynics reading this may scoff that SFA are a mere pop band, but they’d be vastly mistaken. What other bands can make songs as good as SFA, by blending pop sensibilities with anarchistic ideology, and a splattering of Techno? SFA spit out a fantastic sounds just as good on daytime radio and all-night parties and when it comes to their live performances, they are damn near impossible to beat!

But, preceding the Super Furries, was Killa Kella. There are beatboxers, and there is Killa Kella. Killa Kella doesn’t so much human beatbox, as human beatbox, fade, scratch and manipulate all at once. Jaws were hitting the floor just as hard the beats flowing from his gob!!!!

It’s hard to review beatboxing, all I can tell you that he was the best I’ve heard, and check out his website.

SFA’s arrival was heralded with a remixed version of ‘(A) Touch Sensitive’, which saw the band’s surround sound system utilised to full effect, creating a whirl of bassladen beats around the venue.

The set was quite mellow overall, but still managed to fit in classics such as ‘Ice Hockey Hair’, a bleepy ‘Play it Cool’, as well as covering new songs like ‘Receptacle For The Respectable’ which starts off all sixties retro cool, before taking a turn into death techno alley. ‘No Sympathy’ slowed the pace down, momentarily that is, until the climatic hardcore noise marathon kicked in and really gave a mauling to the salivating audiences eardrums.

There was no encore, only a track from their Welsh language ‘Mwng’ album, a really lush mellow affair, that suddenly appeared to have a sampled guest vocal from good old Arnold Schwarzeneger, before kicking into a HARDCORE techno breakbeat noise fest that lasted around 20 minutes, turning what was a happy dancefloor into one of bemusement and action.

Super Furry Animals are the best band we have in Britain today, and if you want to be cynical, well it’s your tough shit, as you’re only going to have a heart attack worrying about it a hell of a lot faster than the converts who are revelling in the Super Furry Genius!