Open To Everything

The blissed-out sounds. The Afrobeat percussion. The more sun we're getting on our skin, the more Jinja Safari's music feels right. But as much as their refreshing blend of indie seems perfect for all that good summer gear, like road trips, barbecues, bonfires and early morning surfs, it goes a bit deeper than that – a bright, shimmering reflection of the inspiration and experiences behind the songs.

For it was with wide eyes and open ears that Jinja Safari founders Marcus Azon and Cameron 'Pepa' Knight explored foreign lands, and when the eccentric multi-instrumentalists returned with new tools and stories they released that unbridled energy into the band's first record.

“It's been pretty cool where we've got this project where we could go to these places and record samples from each place we went to and we got more of an understanding of where the sound we've been so influenced by, where it's coming from,” says Knight. “It has been a cool little experience being able to see these places and get a lot out of it.”

The locales were found off the beaten track and away from any sort of culture that resembled the life he and his fellow bandmates enjoy in Sydney. Travels throughout the African continent provided his running mate Azon with great scope for the record's lyrical content, and also allowed him to connect with the Ugandan township of Jinja – his grandmother's home and the place that spawned the band's name. For Knight, however, his soul was squeezed in the subcontinent.

“I spent a lot of time in India and I absolutely love the way they live over there; they live so simply over there. But everywhere I went, you heard this amazing traditional Indian music that had really crazy and complex rhythms and melodies, and the whole time you're there your head is just bursting with ideas. And being able to meet musicians in each place that we went to, and getting to record with them and getting some of those sounds on the album was a really cool thing.”

And even in sleepy towns and hidden villages, the power of a melody or the beat of a drum allowed Knight to share moments with locals that may not have blossomed otherwise. “The Himalayas where we went to, no one spoke English there so you're doing a lot of hand signals,” he recalls, “but when it comes to music it's like a universal language in a way, hey. It was nice just being able to enjoy each other's company and smile at each other and have a little jam.”

One need only listen to Jinja Safari briefly to marvel at the magical collision of sounds and instrumentation surrounding the vocal harmonies. Suitably, the band broke through into the mainstream with their song Peter Pan, and that idealistic Lost Boys wonderment still plays heavily in their musical make-up and visual aesthetic.

“I've got some new instruments that I'm using this tour so I'm keen to give them a try,” Knight reveals with glee. “I'm going to be taking the harmonium with me; I got that in India – Delhi – but I've been recording with it. A lot of the songs have the harmonium in it in the recordings but it's been too delicate to travel live, but Marcus just made a massive padded box for it so it looks good, it looks like it's going to be very safe.

“And I'm making a keytar at the moment – I lost my other one – and so what I've been doing is getting scraps from the backyard and I found an old MIDI controller that I'm going to use parts from and do some arts and crafts and see if I can come up with this keytar,” he adds. “It might go horribly wrong but we'll see how we go. I'm really keen to get an autoharp [also], but at the same time I have collected a lot of instruments, and a lot of them I can't even play yet so maybe I should start learning the ones I have before I start buying other ones?” he ponders.

No matter which angle he's coming from, Knight's enthusiasm for music is tangible. Case in point: the shaggy-haired muso should be happy resting on his laurels with Jinja Safari's long-awaited debut finally in the bag – he produced the thing, after all. However, The Music discovers he's already getting restless for the future. Knight mentions that his head's a bit spacey and cloudy today after getting too into the recording of new ideas: “Forgive me if I'm a bit strange,” he chuckles a little sheepishly, before expanding on the statement.

“At the moment, 'cause obviously we've released the album earlier this year so now it's time to start thinking about what we can do next, so I was just riding my bike and had some inspiration so I had to quickly get it down before the interview,” he remarks in a pretty surprising admission. “I've got so many dodgy little ideas on my phone and most times I listen back to it and [it's] like, 'I'm not even sure what that is or why I came up with that'. But [I work] quickly, even if it's just recording down the MIDI parts in Pro Tools and just getting it out of my head and quickly arranging it; so just then I put in a core acoustic guitar and put in some bass and a simple drum beat just to get the vibe I had in my head.”

Creativity sprouts fast in Knight's mind, but he's dedicated when it comes to seeing things through. Nothing gets forwarded to Azon before it's at least “half-decent”, and following that there's much to-ing and fro-ing between the creative lynchpins before it's time to work the song up with the rest of the band. He admits that he hopes listeners take the same care with the record, especially since the quintet are adamant the best gem is found in the full-length's final moments.

“The songs sort of all work as a whole in my opinion, but I think all of us agree that our favourite song on there would be Bay Of Fires,” he opines. “It's the last song on the record and it has a bit more of that Indian drone and has that raaga scale included in there, and it's a good ol' sing-along live. Out of the songs we have played live that one has been getting a really good response, so we're naming the tour after it because we like it so much and we want other people to listen to the whole album until the end and make sure they hear it.”

The Afro-indie troupe are excited by the opportunity to deliver an extended and more rounded setlist on this run of dates. Knight admits that after touring with the Locked By Land material for the past three years they've sailed that ship to shore. And although the band have been operating as a five-piece for many years – Azon and Knight's song templates brought to life by Jacob Borg, Joe Engstrom and Alister Roach – this most recent batch of tunes are recognised as the first that have really been penned with a band in mind, a fact which now makes their live set feel more natural and fresh.

The Bay Of Fires tour wraps its way around the country throughout the next month, and will see Jinja Safari extending the sensorial thrills for fans more than ever before. They want you to be a passenger in the jeep with them, and have developed ways to maintain the tribalism of those old shows, without the breakage bills that would follow. “We've got some visual artists from Sydney to help put a projection show together, and we're making it more of a concept show; we want people to feel like when they come to our shows it will be a bit of a weird cult experience. We also wanted it to relate to our latest clip to Dozer,” Knight adds, referencing the playful sect like story that's played out.

“Our past shows have gotten a bit out of hand, to be honest, and we'll climb on the wrong lighting rig or have too many people on stage. Some people can get pretty cranky when we do things like that and so we're looking at ways that we can make our shows bigger and at the same time be safe – have fun but have safe fun.”