Pleasantly Savage by Pleasant Savages

The creative journey started with Oli trying find an alternative way to write poetry as he can't read and write due to severe dyslexia. This meant that Oli couldn't write poetry physically so he wanted to find an alternative way through music.

Initially Oli was inspired by Bob Dylan due to his poetic/musical combination.

Arctic Monkeys, The Pixies and alternative music are Oli’s other inspirations.

Oli's first recorded song was a song called “You Don’t Have To Take Drugs To Be a Rockstar”. Oli was into punk music and classic rock at the time and a lot of the songs were about taking drugs and sex this made Oli think about what else he could write about, the song is a humorous song about a rockstar that actually doesn’t need to take drugs (as it says on the tin).

Oli continued to learn guitar and experiment with different ways of writing. Later on Oli got inspired by Carl Young this then turned into a study of hypnosis (NLP), these two things inspired Oli's song writing further.

Oli's music became a way of getting insight into his own psyche. Through being inspired by Carl Young, Oli went through an individuation process. The Shadow and an individuation processes where the main two concepts.

The shadow is the disowned part of yourself (anything you've suppressed or disowned).
Individuation (through art and writing songs). Oli thought this would be a good way of writing through a mixture of a NLP technique and shadow work. Oli would purposely grab a memory of something that was bothering him and then use Karl Young's idea to integrate these things so they can be expressed in a healthy rather then a recurring unhealthily in a subconscious way.

Through learning hypnosis and NLP there is a technique where you can go back to a memory which is bothering you and then you can change the perspective of the memory so that it no longer bothers you.

Whatever it is, Oli would visualise it and change the meaning of the event. Oli decided to integrate this method into his songwriting and he found that incorporating humour with this was an excellent method to keep it light and not to take himself too seriously.

There is subtle humour in Oli’s songwriting, Oli likes dramatise and blow things out of proportion in a funny way.

Oli joined up with Marty Drew 2019, a musician, songwriter and music teacher for commercial, creative and theoretical development within his songwriting, together they created "Pleasantly Savage".

Marty has always wanted to create songs but has always found it too much of a lonely process, combined with Oli’s great wit, talent and friendship Oli has, in his own way, given Marty a reason to create also. Marty has a sound knowledge of music theory which has helped Oli immensely with his songwriting and musicianship.

We hope you enjoy our collaborative creative efforts!