Welsh musician Gruff Rhys might be best known for his work with indie band the Super Furry Animals, but he’s about release his sixth album, Pang, which has been produced by South African electronic artist Muzi. He’s also performing at Zebulon this week, so we chatted…

L.A. WEEKLY: Pang is your sixth solo album — are you pleased with it?

GRUFF RHYS: I suppose it’s all about the songs to me. I’m still trying to work out new ways of songwriting for myself that somehow make them more original. Songwriting is quite an arcane medium so trying to write an original song is my aim. That’s what keeps me going.

You worked with Muzi on Damon Albarn’s Africa Express album and then brought him onto your own…

I met him during the Africa Express album, yeah. I did a track with Muzi and two rappers from BCUC, the amazing band from Soweto. We wrote a track together called “Vessels” which ended up on an Africa Express EP called MOLO. I was really blown away by how Muzi worked as a producer. The basis for that track was the guitar, which is my main instrument as well. A few months later I was working on a track for a project and I sent it to Muzi to remix, and it’s the second track on the album, called “Bae Bae Bae.” I was really blown away by his mix, so I asked if he’d be interested in making a whole record.

Do you prefer working as a solo artist as opposed to the band dynamic?

Yeah, I mean it’s totally different. With a band, you figure out a language of writing that is gonna keep everyone happy. You get to know each other’s tastes and you kind of adopt each other’s tastes after a while. But making anything as a band takes a long time. The main difference when I write alone is it’s much more immediate. You can get an idea and record it immediately and it’s done. But then, I often produce my own records by default. So it was nice working with a producer on this album because I trusted Muzi musically. Being able to hand over my idea for the song and have someone completely deconstruct it in a really great way was very freeing as well.

What can we expect from the L.A. set?

It’s me and Kliph Scurlock on drums — he was in the Flaming Lips for a long time and then he moved to Wales. So we’ll be performing as a duo. We’ve got some film projections — we’ve made a visual representation of the whole Pang album to hopefully put on a memorable night.

When these shows are over, what else do you have coming up?

I’m looking forward to releasing Pang and just concentrating on that. I’m always working on things, but yeah, concentrating on Pang for the time being.

Gruff Rhys plays at 8 p.m. on Friday, September 13 at Zebulon.