Gruff Rhys's Separado! & Tony da Gatorra, BFI Southbank

Patagonia’s Welshness was a nagging issue for Gruff Rhys, mainman of Welsh psycho-nauts Super Furry Animals. His distant cousin, the folk singer René Griffiths, was born in the desert-filled southern reaches of Argentina, but visited Wales and appeared there on TV in the mid seventies. Remembering those appearances, Rhys decided to visit Patagonia to search for Griffiths amongst the region’s little-known Welsh-speaking community. Given a Rhys-hosted outing at the BFI yesterday, the resulting film Separado! was billed as being followed by a live set with Brazilian Furry Freak Brother-lookalike Tony da Gatorra.

Da Gattora also appears in Separado! Born Antonio Carlos Correia de Moura in 1951, his first album, So Protestio was issued in Brazil in 2005. He’s the inventor of The Gattor, a sickle-shaped blue and white electronic percussion instrument that’s strapped on like a guitar. Despite not having a language in common, Rhys and da Gatorra collaborated on the just-released album The Terror of Cosmic Loneliness (see video, below). Although the duo took five days to work up the music, it was recorded in five hours.

Separado! is an often touching documentary of Rhys’ journey through Patagonia’s Welsh descendents looking for Griffiths. The 100,000 population town Trelew remains the capital of South America’s New Wales, with pages of its phone book devoted to entrants with the last name Griffiths. Separado! is less Who Do Think You Are and more, as Rhys puts in the evening’s Q and A, a “magical realist” representation of the search for a lost part of Wales, personified by René Griffiths. Most of Patagonia’s Welsh immigrants arrived there in the 1850s fleeing persecution by Anglican landowners. Rhys was setting out on a solo tour and had to start somewhere, so he chose Patagonia. However, Griffiths couldn’t be found. No one knew where he was.

After a Q & A where Rhys admits that while making the film “we didn’t know what we were doing, but I did know what I wanted to say,” Rhys announces he has an “extremely special guest, René Griffiths.”

Suddenly, there’s the elusive Griffiths, fuller of figure than the images from the film with an acoustic guitar, red-fringed poncho and trousers tucked into his boots, plains style. Hammering at his guitar he executes “a typical Gaucho song in Spanish with a bit of Welsh.” Next up is the laudatory (Welsh-language) “Tonight It’s Raining Beer.” Introducing it, Griffiths says that when visiting Wales he’d been told to drink like the Welsh. In the audience, Rhys visibly glows.

Next up, da Gattora takes the stage, joining the pair for a run through of “Gyrru Gyrru Gyrru” (Driving Driving Driving), from Rhys’ 2007 solo album Candylion. Griffiths gone, Rhys offers the audience a gentle warning: “we made a record called The Terror of Cosmic Loneliness which may give you an idea of the direction.” The fuzz on Rhys' acoustic guitar set to stun with da Gattora rhythms this close to a seventies’ home organ drum machine, the pair perform a lacerating version of …Cosmic Loneliness’ freaky “In A House With No Mirrors (You’ll Never Get Old)”. Monolithic Black Sabbath riffs are given an added edge by the primitive electronic beats – Silver Apples recast as a metal band.

Taking over, da Gattora spews forth a song in Portuguese described by Rhys as having as its “general message a voice for the landless.” A crazy mélange of plip-plop beats, coconut-shell rhythms and cheese-grater guitar, it certainly evokes anguish.

Rhys hoists a placard emblazoned Obrogaod (thank you) and it’s over. Peculiar, and a testament not only to Rhys’ open-mindedness and willingness to adventure anywhere sonically, this was also a tribute to the unique musicians that lurk at the various edges of the earth. Where next for Rhys?

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Gruff Rhys in the studio with Tony da Gatorra, below :