1 March 2013

Unearthed Reviews: SAFIA. Three Stars.

| Barcham
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SAFIA

My enslavement in the Unearthed Review mines continues. Today I dug up SAFIA.

Here’s what they have to say about themselves:

“Electronic indie has come out of the woodwork of late. Not content simply to play bit parts and supporting rolls in niche clubs or appear as remixes on iPod shuffles, the Venn diagram of genres has undergone somewhat of a revival.

Enter SAFIA, who after only five months of being together have already supported The Aston Shuffle, Olympic Ayres and Elizabeth Rose. To add to this they recently earned themselves a spot at this years Foreshore Summer Music Festival alongside the likes of Example, Calvin Harris, Major Lazer, Porter Robinson and Flume. Their songs ‘Stretched & Faded’ and ‘Mercury’ have both received raving review from blogs and they have even received praise from legendary world champion surfer Kelly Slater.

There’s something calming about the beachfront waves of electrical indie coming in from these guys. The heartbeat of their sound is a layered pastiche of warm noise that reverberates and loops with an ever-increasing sense of ambition, but the soundscape they grow is more than that. Each track is dusted with a tinkering of sorrow and sadness that, like musical chimes, seems at the whim of movement, tossed about and taking new directions at varying velocities of intensity. Each listen seems to reveal something different – an unfamiliar lyric, a drop in sound you hadn’t heard before, a beat you didn’t see coming – and that shows that more than simply Garage Band throwaways from the Mac era, SAFIA have become fine craftsman in their field.

There’s clichés to be tossed about here – stuff about these guys being “one to watch” or that their sound is “fresh” – but the music speaks for itself, so do yourself a favor.”

Well to be honest I believe that’s something someone else said about them, but it’s what they’ve put in the section where they are supposed to talk about themselves.

Umm that’s a rather nice write up actually… just read that.

Ok apparently I need to say more. Yesterday I said the band I was reviewing needed to do something to make themselves stand out. SAFIA is a band that does exactly that. It’s a rather chilled take on electronica and it has a sound that, while not wholly unique, it at least a little different to most electronica I’ve heard. Their music seems to be designed to play while you muck about with image editing software, which is handy because that’s what I was doing when I listened to them. They went well together.

So uhh… positive review? I was really hoping to hate what I heard today because my last three scores have been 5, 4, and 3. It would have been nice to give a 2. Stupid competent electronica.

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