Gruff Rhys: American Interior

Gruff Rhys (Super Furry Animals, Neon Neon) has announced his new multiplatform tale of adventure.  American Interior is set for a May 2014 release as an album, book, film and app.

With American Interior, Rhys establishes himself as a storyteller, blurring the boundaries of songwriting, music, literature, film and technology to tell the true story of John Evans.  In 1792, John Evans, a twenty-two-year-old farmhand from Wales, travelled to America to discover whether there was a Welsh-speaking Native American tribe known as The Madogwys still walking the Great Plains.

In the summer of 2012, Rhys, himself a distant relative of Evans, retraced the explorer’s route by means of an “Investigative Concert Tour ™” – a series of solo gigs across the continent.  Documenting both Evans’ and Rhys’ adventures, American Interior is released across four different formats, each of which explores the story from a unique angle:

The album will be released on May 5th, and features thirteen new songs inspired by Evans’ original journey.

The book is a psychedelic historical travelogue in which Rhys traces Evans’ incredible journey from North Wales to New Spain, alongside the tale of his own American roadtrip following in Evans’ footsteps. The book will be published in hardback and eBook in late May.

The film is a visual document of Rhys’ 2012 tour in which fiction, fact, fantasy, myth and music collide. It is due for release in the UK on May 9th. View the trailer here in English or Welsh.

The app, also due in May, creates an immersive version of the John Evans story by compiling artwork, animation, prose, film clips and original music.

Read more about the project as explained by Gruff Rhys himself, on the Gruffington Post.

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