Music > Album Reviews

Super Furry Animals' Fuzzy Logic: remastered 20th anniversary edition

02/11/16

20 years on, The Super Furry Animals release this deluxe edition of their assured debut Fuzzy Logic. Split over two discs, it is a comprehensive collection of everything surrounding the recording and release of that album.

Disc One is the album itself and all of the B-Sides from the four singles, "sonically rediscovered" from the original tapes. These tracks have never sounded better than they do here, and although this would make for an acceptable reissue of a classic album, there's nothing new here for the seasoned SFA fan.

Disc Two however is the reason that die hard fans should be picking this up. The first four tracks are the fabled Fulham demo session, recorded at the behest of Creation boss Alan McGee. Whilst rough around the edges (Gruff's voice has never sounded more, for want of a better word, gruff), it shows that they not only had great tunes, fully formed from the get go, but with the inclusion of Sali Mali, that they also never had any intention of leaving their Welsh language roots behind them. Something that McGee had recommended after seeing them play live for the first time.

Eleven more tracks follow, from a pre-album recording session in Wales, including an enjoyably shambolic The Man Don't Give A Fuck (thankfully left off the original Fuzzy Logic, giving the band time to work and shape it into the epic behemoth that we know and love today) and a strangely alien sounding If You Don't Want Me To Destroy You, with its original vocal refrain of "microwaves, can I surf upon your microwaves?" (eventually replaced with the infinitely better "gravity, you just hold me down so quietly"). The album is then rounded off with an energetic and surprisingly clear recording of their appearance at the Phoenix Festival in July 1996.

This collection not only includes one of the best albums of all time (included in the 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die), but is also a fascinating look into the recording process and evolution of a collection of songs, starting as rough demos, and then being sharpened, honed, galvanised and chromed into a bona fide classic.

10/10

Go here to listen to two previously unreleased tracks from the remastered Fuzzy Logic.