Safri Duo
Safri Duo is a Danish percussion duo composed of Uffe Savery and Morten Friis. Initially classic oriented, by 1999 they were discovered by a label executive working on classic music. After being signed, a track mixing both tribal sound and modern electronica was set to be released in 2000 The result was the tremendously popular "Played-a-live (The Bongo Song)," that became one of the most popular songs in Europe that year.
Classic years
Uffe Savery and Morten Friis met in 1977 while attending the Tivoli Garden Boys' Guard, and later, in the Royal Danish Conservatory of Music formed an experimental duo, called Safri Duo, whose name originated from the first letters of their last names: Savery and Friis. Under this name, Savery and Friis released six albums between 1990 and 1998, mostly percussion transcriptions from classics from Bach, Chopin and others. Their talent did not pass unnoticed, and in 1999 the duo was given a contract with Universal Music Denmark.
A New Episode
Earlier in 2000, a track named "The Bongo Song" started appearing on club's playlists. Produced by Michael Parsberg, it soon got airtime on MTV Europe. The mix between the then fashionable tribal drums over trance proved to be a success, and it ended the year as one of the best selling singles in Europe in 2000. The album, named Episode II hit the market on 4 June 2001, nine tracks long, all featured the same percurssion-electronica combination, except Adagio that kept the former classic line of the duo. A reissue added a second remix-only CD and the single Sweet Freedom recorded with Michael McDonald was released on 30 September 2002. Two more tracks from Episode II were released as singles, Samb-Adagio and Baya Baya.
3.0
In 2003 the new album 3.0 was released. It featured Clark Anderson as vocalist on several of the tracks, including All the People in the World, Agogo Mosse and Laarbasses. The single Rise became a huge success and later they released a new version called Rise (Leave Me Alone) which featured Clark Anderson on vocals. In 2004 they released a remix album of 3.0 called 3.5 - International Version. It included the new version of Rise and several other tracks with Clark Anderson as vocalist and, of course, remixes of the already known tracks.
Discography
- Turn Up Volume (1990)
- Works For Percurssion (1995)
- Lutoslawski, Bartók, Helweg (1995)
- Percussion Transcriptions (1995)
- Goldrush (1996)
- Bach To The Future (1998)
- Episode II (2002)
- Episode II - The Remix Edition (2002)
- Safri Duo 3.0 (2003)
- Safri Duo 3.5 - International Version (2004)