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Top rocker Gruff Rhys returned to his hometown last night to speak about his first foray into writing film scores.

The Super Furry Animals frontman created music for the film Set Fire To The Stars which will be released in the USA next month.

Starring Celyn Jones from Holyhead and Lord Of The Rings actor Elijah Wood, the film tells the story of one week in the life of iconic Welsh poet Dylan Thomas when he visits New York in 1953.

The movie was shown to an appreciative audience at Neuadd Ogwen, Bethesda and afterwards Gruff, Celyn and the film’s co-producer Andy Evans, answered the audience’s questions.

Gruff, known as someone who likes to push the envelope musically, says he was surprised to be asked to write the music for the film.

And he was even more surprised to find himself composing a jazzy score for the movie.

He said: “It’s great to create a score for a film. I’ve learnt a lot and it’s been a really different experience for me.”

Putting together a jazz band to meet the challenge, Gruff found himself experimenting with different sounds and styles.

“I formed a jazz group with drummer Chris Walmsley, Jim Barr who is the double bass player with Portishead, Osian Gwynedd (formerly of Big Leaves and Sybridion) on piano and Gruff Ab Arwel from Y Niwl who arranged the strings.

“It was really good because it’s been really varied but it means we’ve had to adopt a particular instrumentation and not veer from that,” he added.

But although musically different it is not a style he expects to continue playing.

“I wrote a lot of music for the film, enough for a double album. And some of the pieces have been stripped right back to just piano in places.

“There’s only one song that is a ’50s trad jazz pastiche. They needed a song that was being played on the radio in the background.

“I had to pinch myself that it was really happening because that’s something I never expected to make.

“There’s also two or three songs and the theme song that are mostly instrumental, although I was trying to get a jazz band to play.

Krautrock instrumentals, but it ended up sounding like neither.

“It’s nice to try to come up with different musical ideas that will take me somewhere I’ve never been before,” he said.

Currently preparing for the launch of a book about the history of the Super Furry Animals, Gruff said he would like to write another film score.

“But you can’t speculate on those kind of things. They happen or they don’t. Through writing songs I’ve ended up in some really different situations where I could never have pictured myself, so it’s definitely part of the adventure for me, but I don’t crave anything in particular. I take it as it comes,” he said.

Celyn Jones told the audience getting Gruff Rhys to provide the film’s soundtrack had proved the ultimate coup.

“I’m playing my literary hero in a film scored by my musical hero – it doesn’t get much better than that,” he said.

Seeing the movie completed and being shown in cinemas was the culmination of a life-long dream of playing the boozy Swansea bard

for the 35 year-old actor, who also co-wrote the script.

He said: “I was aware of Thomas back during my drama school days in Oxford, but it wasn’t until I wandered – quite by chance – into a second-hand bookshop there that the idea for this film came about.

“Inside, I picked up a copy of Dylan Thomas In America by John Brinnin, the American academic who’d first invited him to the States for a reading tour.

“Ever since then I’ve wanted to make a film about their relationship.”

Co-written with Downton Abbey director Andy Goddard, Celyn described the script as akin to Withnail & I, the cult 1987 comedy about two sozzled thespians whose friendship becomes strained during an increasingly drunken weekend away.

“Set Fire To The Stars is very much one of those never-meet-your-heroes-type stories.

“When Brinnin, who was a big admirer of Thomas, brought him over to New York and became his agent he really didn’t know what he was letting himself in for.

“Theirs was very much a ‘rock star and his fan’ kind of relationship, with both men polar opposites of each other both in term of geography and their approach to life.

“And the reality of that situation quickly dawned on Brinnin when this lumbering unmade bed of a man hovered into view, stuffed into his duffel coat, with hair like a bird’s nest and a massive appetite for the strong stuff,” he said.

Celyn added the film was shot during an 18-day shoot in Swansea last February.

“Our crew did an incredible job recreating New York City in south Wales,” he added.

He said the movie will be released in the USA in March but first he will attend an awards ceremony in Miami where it has been nominated for best script.