The Super Furries made musical history in 2001, with the world's first simultaneous release of an audio and DVD album. Possibly as far a cry from Mwng as was possible, Rings Around The World was an ambitious release that won fans in all quarters.

Significantly, it was the band's first release for Sony. The extra cash afforded by such a deal was clearly well spent: Rings became the band's most varied song collection since Fuzzy Logic.

From the opening Alternate Route To Vulcan Street, it was obvious this was another leap forward in their musical evolution. However, the song's lush string arrangements and downbeat vocal delivery were just the beginning.

Sidewalk Serfer Girl and No Sympathy were essentially platforms for Cian Ciarán's extensive technological wizardry to be given free rein. Contrasting these, Presidential Suite and Run! Christian, Run! betrayed a classicism of songwriting that confirmed Gruff Rhys' position as a world class talent.

The radio-friendly lead single, Juxtapozed With U, was originally intended by the band to be a duet between Bobby Brown and E17's Brian Harvey, but they both turned down this golden opportunity to perform a summery ode to rising house prices. So Gruff duetted with himself instead. "It's probably the first duet by one person," he said. "It's as close to a soul song as a load of atheists can get."

Most remarkable, however, was Receptacle For The Respectable. A four-part pop symphony that managed to recall the heady heights of Good Vibrations (with a little bit of goth metal thrown in for good measure), they even managed to get former Wings singer Paul McCartney to perform on it. In typically perverse SFA fashion, they recorded him chewing vegetables down the phone.

The DVD contained, along with short films for each track, a number of remixes and bonus songs. The sense that SFA were taking their creative freedom to the limit was confirmed by Gruff's revelation that it had begun life as a 75 minute concept album about the state of the planet - though perhaps thankfully the rest of the band vetoed the idea.

For all their increased musical freedom, Rings Around The World also found them losing some of the humour displayed on the Creation albums, and displacing some of the low-fi charm of Mwng. Their next trick, 2003's Phantom Power, would see them once again stripping back much of the instrumentation in favour of a more acoustic-based sound.

Words: Joe Goodden