SET FIRE TO THE STARS by GRUFF RHYS

This is an album of music written for a film directed by Andy Goddard concerning the poet Dylan Thomas�s first week in the USA in 1950 and his uneven friendship with fellow poet � and agent of sorts - John Malcolm BrinninGruff Rhys presents the soundtrack to the film Set Fire To The Stars. Although recorded around the same time as Gruff�s last LP (2014�s hugely acclaimed American Interior), Set Fire To The Stars paints a very different picture to that of the Welsh explorer John Evans. Equal parts cocktail jazz, hazy Americana and Atomic Age bop, it�s a love letter to New York in all its hopeful, post war glory � a gorgeous diversion of a record to add to Gruff�s increasingly brilliant solo catalogue. Gruff on Set Fire To The Stars: �This is an album of music written for a film directed by Andy Goddard concerning the poet Dylan Thomas�s first week in the USA in 1950 and his uneven friendship with fellow poet � and agent of sorts - John Malcolm Brinnin. As the film is shot in black and white and set in the Jazz age, I decided not to use any instruments unavailable in that era. I also keep the recordings as live takes. Beyond that � I didn�t try and ape the style of that era in particular apart from the song Atom Bomb which on screen, plays on a jukebox in a cafe and needed to be true to the year sonically and lyrically in some way. �Playing the guitar, I formed a short lived Agro-Jazz quartet (you got a problem with that?) called Video Loss with Chris Walmsley on drums, Jim Barr on double bass and Osian Gwynedd on piano. I wrote a bunch of songs and instrumentals. Some other bits were improvised to picture by Osian Gwynedd and myself. Chop Shop features Video Loss on max Moon-Ra improvisational setting. Gruff ab Arwel arranged all the strings and Gavin Fitzjohn played and scored the brass. It was recorded and mixed at Toybox, Bristol by the incredible Ali Chant � apart from the strings which were recorded at Metropolis, London.�