Glass Animals – Zaba (Vinyl 2LP)

Zaba is the debut album from U.K. quartet Glass Animals, issued on Paul Epworth’s new Wolf Tone label. The album was recorded at Wolf Tone Studios in London and was produced by frontman Dave Bayley under the executive production of Epworth. The 11 track record features new single “Gooey” and a reworking of previous limited EP release, “Black Mambo.” The title, lifted from Dave’s favorite childhood story, comes from William Steig’s The Zabajaba Jungle.

Zaba is one complete beast and a journey you will get most from if you immerse yourself fully and listen from start to finish – a series of situations describing a wealth of strange characters and the weird, subtropical land in which they exist. “The sound of the record,” Bayley says, “is like a backdrop of man-made wilderness.” What resonates more than ever though are the stories within the songs and the characters used to populate and deliver those stories. Inspired by the exploratory, New World scenarios of Apocalypse Now, The Island of Dr Moreau, Heart of Darkness, The African Queen and Mosquito Coast, Zaba’s songs tackle the humanization of nature and human interference with nature.