Oola’s May Music Pick, Felix Laband, Deaf Safari
Oola | Published on 4/27/2024
Oola’s May Music Pick
Felix Laband
Deaf Safari
Since I released my own album earlier this year, many people have asked what my musical influences were when I was first beginning to compose. That’s a difficult answer to pin down as I can remember so many styles of music being played by my family and in my neighborhood from the time I could walk until the time I walked out of my childhood home. But, given that I started to compose in the late teens of this century when I was just out of my own teens, I think I can say that Felix Laband’s 2015 album, Deaf Safari was the inspiration for me to sit down and compile all of the different influences that shaped my musical tastes and try and regurgitate them into an album that reflects my own experience of being alive in these turbulent times.
Deaf Safari is Felix’s fifth album, if I’m counting correctly, and is a mix of indietronica melodies and ambient sounds that reflect the social unrest in his life and paints portraits of the swirling atmospheres of South Africa- Felix is from Pietermaritzburg. The tracks shift and morph amongst themselves and even within an individual track. I still go back and forth about whether I hate or tolerate or love parts of the second track, “I’m So High, I Swear I Could”, that I’ve grown to accept that it’s there on the album and worth listening through.
That Felix was successful shaping his career with PC based music (computer based, not “politically correct”) he has stated, freed him up so that he was not confined by any particular style. Instead, he incorporates everything from classical influences to club music’s moody beat-scapes and Kwaito-edged acid jazzy vibes, all combined with an airy ambience that captures the ever-evolving social zeitgeists of South Africa’s mashup political/cultural/spiritual pureé.
In fact, Felix’s words from the liner notes read:
“Deaf Safari is an audio collage of subjects that interest me and speak of the world I live in. It is an album composed of sampled recordings from the media landscape that has been the soundtrack to my life over the last ten years.
The most important development in my current music and as can be heard on Deaf Safari has been my understanding of the beauty and power of the spoken word.”
So yes, you’ll get a sprinkling of spoken word in these tracks. And while none of these tracks makes me want to single it out for inclusion in a separate playlist, I think that’s because this album sinks into your skin with repeated listening and while a track may be enjoyable individually, the whole of the parts is what makes this music inspiring for me, especially in my own compositions.
Check it out and see if you can snag a new or used copy on vinyl at your local record store. ;-)
Also available for download on Bandcamp, and on CD and streaming on YouTube and Qobuz through Roon.