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**Glass Animals - Zaba**
★★★★☆

In the summer of 2014, while the world was busy obsessing over Taylor Swift's transition to full-blown pop stardom and Arctic Monkeys' slick rock reinvention, four Oxford lads quietly unleashed something far more intriguing into the musical ether. Glass Animals' debut album *Zaba* didn't arrive with fanfare or massive label backing, but it carried something infinitely more valuable: a completely singular vision that would reshape the landscape of indie electronic music.

The story begins, as many great musical tales do, in a university bedroom. Dave Bayley, the band's frontman and primary creative force, had been crafting these otherworldly soundscapes since his days studying medicine at King's College London. Armed with little more than a laptop, cheap microphones, and an insatiable curiosity for sound manipulation, Bayley created what would become the DNA of Glass Animals' aesthetic. When he reunited with childhood friends Drew MacFarlane, Edmund Irwin-Singer, and Joe Seaward back in Oxford, the bedroom project evolved into something far more ambitious.

*Zaba* – named after the children's book character Zabajaba the Elephant – exists in a sonic universe entirely its own. This is tropical psychedelia filtered through British sensibilities, where hip-hop beats collide with indie rock guitars and Bayley's falsetto vocals float like smoke through a fever dream. The album's 11 tracks unfold like a journey through some undiscovered rainforest, populated by mysterious creatures and hidden dangers lurking beneath lush, beautiful surfaces.

The album's masterstroke lies in its ability to be simultaneously accessible and deeply weird. Take "Black Mambo," the opening salvo that immediately establishes the band's M.O. with its stuttering percussion, distorted vocal samples, and lyrics that namecheck everything from pineapples to murder. It's pop music, but pop music from another planet entirely. The track builds and breathes with organic unpredictability, setting the stage for an album that consistently defies expectations.

"Gooey" stands as *Zaba*'s crown jewel, a slow-burning seduction that showcases the band's gift for crafting hooks that burrow deep into your subconscious. Bayley's vocals, processed and layered until they become another instrument entirely, drift over a hypnotic groove that feels both ancient and futuristic. The song's success on streaming platforms would later prove prophetic of the band's ability to capture the zeitgeist without compromising their artistic vision.

Equally compelling is "Pools," a track that exemplifies the band's talent for creating atmosphere. Built around a deceptively simple guitar line and punctuated by tribal percussion, it's a meditation on desire and longing that feels both intimate and cinematic. "Hazey" pushes the experimental envelope even further, with its disjointed rhythms and stream-of-consciousness lyrics creating a genuinely disorienting listening experience that somehow remains compelling rather than alienating.

The album's production, handled primarily by Bayley himself, deserves special recognition. Every sound feels carefully placed yet organic, creating a sense of space that allows each element to breathe while maintaining the overall cohesion. The way vocal samples are woven into the fabric of songs like "Wyrd" and "Cocoa Hooves" demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of texture and mood that belies the band's relative inexperience.

*Zaba*'s influence on the indie electronic landscape cannot be overstated. In the decade since its release, countless bands have attempted to replicate its particular blend of organic and synthetic elements, though few have matched its effortless creativity. The album helped establish a template for the kind of genre-fluid, streaming-era music that would dominate the latter half of the 2010s.

More importantly, *Zaba* established Glass Animals as legitimate innovators rather than mere trend-followers. While their subsequent releases would bring greater commercial success – particularly 2020's viral hit "Heat Waves" – this debut remains their most cohesive artistic statement. It's an album that rewards repeated listening, revealing new details and hidden depths with each encounter.

Ten years later, *Zaba* sounds neither dated nor overly prescient. Instead, it exists in its own temporal bubble, a 43-minute escape pod to somewhere more interesting than wherever you happen to be. In an era of playlist culture and shortened attention spans, Glass Animals created something increasingly rare: an album that demands to be experience