Guerrilla (album) - Origins and Recording

Origins and Recording

Guerrilla was deliberately conceived as a commercial-sounding 'pop' album; a "jukebox sort of album, where you listen to it and every song is different," according to singer Gruff Rhys. Rhys has said that the band felt they were waging a "sonic war" against average music and "the mainstream" with the record.

The Super Furry Animals had originally intended to work on the album with Gorwel Owen, who co-produced 1996's Fuzzy Logic and 1997's Radiator with the band. According to Rhys, however, Owen felt "burned out" after producing other bands solidly for a year and a half and asked the group to wait until he had chance to rest. The Super Furry Animals were so keen to record that they decided to produce the album themselves. Guerrilla was recorded at Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios in Box, Wiltshire during the middle of 1998. Although Rhys has stated that the group met Gabriel several times during recording, and that they thought he was "a good old guy", Real World was chosen because it was near to the band's homes in Wales rather than because of its association with the former Genesis frontman. Sessions were "much less volatile than usual" according to Rhys, as the five members of the band felt they had to reach consensus over everything because they were producing the record themselves—while recording their previous albums the band would often fall out and shout at each other safe in the knowledge that Owen would act as a mediator and take the final decisions. Bassist Guto Pryce has stated that the band also felt happier during recording sessions for Guerrilla because they had their pets with them at Real World, and were able to relax and enjoy the 1998 FIFA World Cup and the British summer.

During recording, the band used a sampler for the first time and hired many different musical instruments. The group experimented with electronic sounds and wrote several of the album's tracks in the studio, allowing "the music to dictate itself". The song "Wherever I Lay My Phone (That's My Home)" was written around the ringtone of a mobile phone with the rhythm track being based on a sample of bassist Guto Pryce tripping over a lead while Huw Bunford played a note on his guitar. "Some Things Come From Nothing" came from an acid house tune written by keyboardist Cian Ciaran. Samples of Rhys playing an out-of-tune acoustic guitar and Ciaran playing drums were mixed together and the song was "written and recorded simultaneously" by the group. "The Sound of Life Today" is a 22 second sample of "Some Things Come From Nothing" played backwards. According to Rhys the band gave the track a "really pompous title" so that listeners would expect to hear the meaning of life and instead get just a "collection of noises". "Do or Die", "Fire in My Heart" and "Keep the Cosmic Trigger Happy" were written by Rhys while "The Door to This House Remains Open" developed from a band jam of the Rod Stewart song "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?" which completely changed over the 30 minutes the group played for. The melody for "Northern Lites" was written by Gruff Rhys several years before the track was released. Reggae and rock styles were tried by the band before they settled on calypso after Rhys wrote lyrics for the song and tried playing along to a preset calypso rhythm track which was on his keyboard. The band added steel drums to the track on the spur of the moment after seeing the instruments "lying around" Real World during recording. The steel drums parts were performed by keyboard player Ciaran, despite the fact he did not know how to play them.

Around 25 tracks were recorded for Guerrilla, with all members of the band agreeing to trim this number down for the final track listing of the record in order to make a 45-minute long album which was immediate. The group chose the 'up' songs, the "digital songs with more of a constant rhythm", that they had recorded and left off the 'down' tracks to create a positive "brash and light-weight" record—a "disposable pop album that's too good to throw away". According to Bunford, some of the more guitar-orientated songs the group recorded were included on initial track listings and were only left off the record at the last minute in favour of more electronic sounding tracks. Rhys has said that the decision to include "The Teacher" on the album was a decisive moment, as the track is "the most stupid thing on the record"—if a more downbeat song, such as eventual B-side "The Matter of Time", had been included in its place, Guerrilla would have been a much more self-indulgent album. The singer has also stated that the group's "healthy ego problems" would often result in individuals fighting to have some of their own songs removed from the final track listing of the record in favour of songs written by other members. The band chose to sequence the album like a hip hop record, with "Check It Out" as an introduction and "A Specific Ocean" and "The Sound of Life Today" as interludes.

The album's title is pun on the band's name but was also chosen by the group as they felt it had added resonance in the wake of the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. Rhys has also stated that the band sometimes flatter themselves that they "take a guerrilla stance outside things, make things that aren't pop, popular in the future". The band added the subtitle "Non violent direct action" to the album's packaging to ensure that no-one could read any "crass, militaristic statements" into the name of the record. The band thought about making a film to accompany the album but ultimately decided that the idea was "too ambitious". They returned to this idea with 2001's Rings Around the World, making music videos for each of the tracks on the record and including them on the album's DVD release.