Super Furry Animals Go Way Back With Early Rarity Stream 'Pocket Sam'
(PC) Super Furry Animals have released one of their earliest recordings, revealing the dreamy space-rock of Pocket Sam to fans with acclaimed-actor and original singer, Rhys Ifans on vocals.
Captured on tape at Grassroots Studio in Cardiff as the Furries started to form in the Welsh capital in 1993, the track is lifted from the bonus disc of the band's upcoming Precreation Percolation compilation, out on Fri 1 May 2026, which also returns their debut EPs, originally released on legendary Welsh indie label, Ankst, to vinyl for the first time in three decades.
Having announced their live return late last year and immediately sold out a run of nine Supacabra 2026 Britain and Ireland tour dates, their first since late 2016, Super Furry Animals keep the party going through the summer by scheduling unmissable, additional appearances in Bristol, York, Llangollen, London, Exeter, Dublin, Birmingham and Salisbury.
One of three unheard tracks to feature Ifans, Pocket Sam joins AK Serenade and Choking On Your Lust on a 22 track CD and 31-track digital 'bonus disc' of material that the band produced prior to signing to Alan McGee's Creation Records in 1995. Alongside Of No Fixed Identity, which the Furries released as a time-limited, Bandcamp-only fundraiser for the Save The Severn Estuary campaign in 2022, Ifans' vocal delivery is met with embryonic, recognisable Furry sonics as the band's early line-up gathered around synth, psych and melodic rock influences.
With an acting career at a tipping point of going stratospheric, Rhys Ifans vacated the singer role by 1994, prior to the band uniting with studio talisman, Gorwel Owen at his Ofn Studio on Ynys Môn, to record their two Ankst EPs. Holding the world record for the longest ever EP title, Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyndrobwllantysiliogogogochynygofod (In Space), was released in 1995, followed in the same year by Moog Droog, with both EPs making up the eight-song track listing of the vinyl version of Precreation Percolation.
By 1995, with a record deal on the table and future classics such as God! Show Me Magic and Hangin' With Howard Marks already making up the band's set list, the band's path following "two years of chaos" (including a legendary 1993 debut 'gig' at Bangor University's Banana Lounge, lasting all of five minutes due to technical and chemical misadventure) was set. In the album's liner notes, singer, Gruff Rhys writes: "It would have been the best gig ever, had we not daisy chained so many synthesizers together, that it resulted in a terminal systems failure."
As nomadic travelling and other musical projects came to an end, Rhys and Dafydd Ieuan (formerly of Ffa Coffi Pawb), Huw 'Bunf' Bunford and Guto Pryce (formerly of U Thant) and, finally, Cian Ciarán (formerly of Wwzz) cast the final Super Furry Animals line-up in stone. It took a higher leap for some than others as Ieuan departed Catatonia on the eve of a lucrative deal with Warner Brothers. "Don't worry" he told Rhys, in early 1995, "we'll be signed by Christmas". He was right, by summer they'd joined Oasis, Primal Scream and The Jesus and Mary Chain in the Creation Records family, leading to a huge London signing party that members the band were famously thrown out of.
"The two-year 'Precreation Percolation' was over and, for better or for worse, our lives would never be the same again," says Rhys. "But we live to tell the tale. The music featured here features some of the residue of that foundational period."
The span of intriguing genre experimentation, spanning long-form electro, blissed out instrumentals and expansive prog-influenced rock, heard across much of Precreation Percolation was subsequently refined and channeled into their thrilling, 1996 debut album, Fuzzy Logic and their untamed live performances.
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