The wonderful thing about music is that sometimes you just don’t know where your voyage of discovery will take you. The power of online music magazines such as this and social media outlets such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube & even Tumblr means that you can stumble across music so easily these days. If you’re open minded about genres then I have a treat for you.
Safari Gold was born in 2012 and then announced to the world in October 2012 and is the creation of four talented musicians from South Wales, Morgan – guitar, keys, vocals, Danny – guitar, keys, vocals, Sion – guitar, vocals and Lewys – drums, keys, vocals.
The band have a free mix tape download for your listening pleasure which I implore you to check out as soon as you’ve finished reading this article. I recommend that you listen to it with the volume up, eyes closed and then just let it wash over you. Simply stunning and refreshingly different is my opinion, go check it out!
Can you introduce yourselves to our readers? There are four members to the group and we’ve been making and playing music together for close to 10 years now. In 2012 we set up a recording studio in our house and started working on new music under our old band name. We felt that the stuff we were creating was such a step up to what we’d done before. The reasons for that were 1. We weren’t paying for studio time 2. We had 100% creative control and 3. We now had some experience. And so it felt natural to start fresh under a new name – Safari Gold. Since then we’ve just been having fun with things and delving into all kinds of different genres. We’ve never been so confident in our music.
What or who are your influences? All kinds of influences. We’re definitely influenced more by hip hop artists lately and for some reason, a lot of french music a la Phoenix and Justice.
What’s been the reaction to Safari Gold so far? It’s been a mixed reaction from fans and friends of our previous group and we expected that. Some people don’t get it, others do. We’re patient and confident though. This isn’t a short term project.
What are your thoughts on the state of the music scene in the UK right now? The UK has and will always produce great music. That’s heart warming but right now, the younger generation are generally listening to a lot of crap. So much of the music out there is lifeless. I don’t see it changing overnight.
And the music scene in South Wales right now? Again, South Wales consistently produces some great artists/bands. Rock has done well here in recent times but i’d like to see some other genres really break through internationally. It would also be nice to see more of the smaller venues packing out to see shows on a regular basis.
What are you listening to right now? Foals, Phoenix, Kendrick Lamar, London Grammar, Justin Timberlake.
What do you think of the demise of high street record stores and physical copies of music? It is a shame because I used to love going out and buying a cd but even I find myself buying on itunes now. Buying music online lacks the excitement of buying a physical copy but It’s just a new era so we have to accept it.
So what are your future plans – album? tour? As we’re still having fun with things, we’re making no promises. We’re working towards releasing an EP before summer. It’s pretty much finished. We’re really really excited about it. Shows will be played here and there until a release is made but I for one cannot wait to play this new stuff live.
Tell us about the video? The footage is of the Haitian community of New York performing voodoo in the 1990’s. I found it in the archives of the media company I work for. We liked it because its quite eerie.
You can check the band out and download the free mixtape from the following links.
https://soundcloud.com/safarigoldmusic/sets/the-howl-mix
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nUe017a7rE&feature=youtu.be
