James Tuft Live at Baketown

There is a coastline beneath the southern skies where the land is vacant and the ocean is wild. I had there a sense of isolation. The song attempts to frame that. The lyrics began forming on a tour with a former band in 2014, while the guitar only emerged the following year in Berlin. The song was eventually completed in 2017, and recorded in a live session at Baketown in Berlin.

Ozwol Me is the performance moniker of South African songwriter and guitarist James Tuft. Beginning his musical career with the band Holiday Murray, co-writing their self-titled debut album in 2011 as well as the follow up Ep Puffadder Sessions (2014). Tuft performed across southern Africa for 5 years before disbanding and relocating as a solo artist to Berlin. It was there that he discovered his solo performance, on the streets and in small bars. The city and its people inevitably influenced the music, which is balladic and melancholic and “puts one in a dreamy mood”. The songs are about humanity and our relationship with love, time and death; the abstraction of life and the search for the sublime. Since moving to Berlin he has released two EP’s, Four Song (2016) and Works and Days (2017). He has performed at venues such as Lido and Funkhaus with acts such as Alice Phoebe Lou and Bakery, and collaborated with the likes of Olmo, Harry Charles and Thor Rixon.