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''Phantom Power'' is the sixth album by Welsh indie rock band Super Furry Animals, released on 21 July 2003 by Epic Records in the United Kingdom. The record was originally conceived as a ten song concept album using D-A-D-D-A-D guitar tuning, but the band chose to abandon this idea during recording as they didn't want to constrain themselves. The group did attempt to create a "more coherent" album than their past efforts by choosing songs which worked well together. ''Phantom Power'' was recorded at the band's own studio, AV Happenings, in Cardiff with the Super Furries producing and engineering themselves for the first time.〔 The album features a range of musical styles, from country rock to techno, although many of the tracks are based around the acoustic guitar.〔 According to chief songwriter and vocalist Gruff Rhys, the album's lyrics deal with "broken relationships and war". The album, like their previous record ''Rings Around the World'', was simultaneously released on CD, vinyl and DVD. The DVD featured a surround sound mix of the album along with animations, commentary by Mario Caldato Jr. (who mixed the record) and remixes. The majority of these remixes were re-released as the album ''Phantom Phorce'' in 2004. ''Phantom Power'' was well received, with many critics suggesting it was the best album of the band's career.〔〔 ==Origins and recording== ''Phantom Power'' was originally conceived as a ten song cycle in the "unconventional" D-A-D-D-A-D guitar tuning.〔〔 Singer Gruff Rhys wrote many of the songs on the album in this tuning and in the key of D major during the space of a few days. These tracks, which included the "Father Father" instrumentals, "Golden Retriever", "Hello Sunshine", "Cityscape Skybaby" and "Out of Control", were then demoed at the house of regular producer Gorwel Owen with overdubs added at the band's own office-block based studio, AV Happenings, in Cardiff.〔 〕 The group took a hands-on approach to the actual recording sessions for ''Phantom Power'', engineering and producing themselves for the first time.〔 Recording largely took place at AV Happenings during the second half of 2002,〔 with the band working through the night so as not to disturb staff who worked in other parts of the building during the day.〔 〕 According to bassist Guto Pryce this involved a fair amount of trial and error as the band "didn't really know what () were doing". Soundproof booths were improvised by setting up tents in the office corridors: "we'd record a guitar and it'd sound rubbish and we had to figure out why. So we started experimenting with different tent designs. In the end it was the wigwam that was easiest to put up and sounded best".〔 The band had to take these booths down before office workers arrived in the morning, a process that guitarist Huw Bunford has described as "ghosts in the night ... a bit clandestine".〔 A brief two-week session with Gorwel Owen at Rockfield Studios saw some of the album's more "straight ahead" tracks recorded with live vocals before the band returned to AV Happenings and "messed around" with them.〔 When the album was almost finished the band enlisted the services of Tony Doogan who engineered sessions during which several vocal parts were recorded. The ten song D-A-D-D-A-D concept was eventually abandoned with Pryce stating "we don't like constraining ourselves and if you've got a concept, you're doing that. And we had some other really nice tunes so we just chose the best songs".〔 According to Rhys the only plan the group stuck to was to make a "more coherent" record: "In the past ... we'd put ideas kind of side by side, and on this record we wanted all those sounds to be more blended".〔 Following arguments over the track listing of previous album ''Rings Around the World'', after a "lot of songs" were recorded necessitating four months worth of discussions about which tracks to leave off the record, the group recorded just 16 largely acoustic based songs during the sessions for ''Phantom Power''.〔〔 Rhys's initial batch of songs were augmented by, among others, the Huw Bunford penned "Sex, War & Robots", the first time the guitarist had had one of his songs included on a Super Furry Animals album and also the first time he had sung lead vocals for the group, "Slow Life", which grew out of an electronic piece of music keyboardist Cian Ciaran had been working on for several years and "The Piccolo Snare" which was partly written in the studio.〔〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Phantom Power (Super Furry Animals album)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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