Skip to main content

It's Zombi time

Every now and again, I’ll get some kind of unconscious pull towards a band that I’ve never heard before, which usually causes me to check out a song, which then leads to an album, which then leads to the purchase of their entire catalog. (I’m kinda obsessive that way.) So it was with Arthur Russell a few months back, and so it has been over the past few weeks with Zombi, an East Coast duo comprised of multi-instrumentalists Steve Moore and A.E. Paterra that puts out instrumental prog-rock records on Relapse, a label known for some intense hardcore metal monstrosities.

Only Zombi doesn’t quite fit that mode, except for the name. For the most part, what they sound like is actually pretty simple: early Rush without the guitars & vocals, mixed with the John Carpenter scores to The Fog and Halloween, with a little Red-era King Crimson thrown in for seasoning. In other words, awesome as shit.

Over the years since their '04 proper debut Cosmos, their discography has tracked a progression from smaller filmic set pieces to more sprawling epics, with the virtuosity and vision improving with each release. However, they’ve topped themselves so far in the '09 with two releases: Spirit Animal (on Relapse, with the album cover above) and a 12” release of former b-side “Sapphire” on the indie Throne Of Blood (a vinyl & digital download dance label set up by members of The Rapture).

The two releases couldn't be more different, and speak to some interesting new directions for the band. Spirit Animal is a vast, percussive and persuasive beast, insinuating through repetition and honed melody. But “Sapphire” is enervated with disco ghosts of yore (Giorgio Moroder in particular) sparking an Italo-influenced dance floor adventure with just the right hint of menace. If the earlier Zombi albums could soundtrack slasher films, the tracks on “Sapphire” could support throbbing and gyrating club scenes worldwide.

I've had their entire catalog on my iPod Shuffle for the past few weeks (well, that and the entire oeuvre of Steely Dan; it's an engaging sugar-and-spice combination perfect for shoveling, hanging, walking, and lurking) and it's been eerie as to how many times I've been doing things and the most perfectest Zombi song will pop up to echo and score the minutiae of life. Again, awesome as shit. Go buy their stuff and slip into another world. No twenty-sided die needed.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"The Silver Gun" by Robert Palmer (1983)

I mean...Urdu? Seriously, Urdu . On an already eclectic and worldly album -- Pride , from 1983 -- "The Silver Gun" closes a chapter in Robert Palmer's career by singing a song about a horse in a language spoken daily by over 100 million people. The liquid bass line and propulsive electronics set out a bedrock for Palmer to ping phrasings rather out of place in Western music, askew astride even the peripatetic minimalism of the rest of the record. Somehow, in the middle of Michigan's Appalachia, I had this on vinyl a few years before the CD era officially commenced. It was an album of effort -- even the cover, a pointillism-and-bronze work, had Palmer's head barely above the water -- but the stitches didn't show to my pre-adolescent eyes and ears. In a career marked by zigs and zags, Pride and "The Silver Gun" were most certainly Other, and for a kid that felt like he didn't belong much of anywhere, it was nice to have those discrete feeling...
Post a Comment
Read more

Some 2024 Listening Pleasures

It started with a gift of two JBL Control 25 speakers, and by "gift" I mean "borrowed" -- a.k.a. "will never return" -- from an obsolete tech detritus pile at work. I may have snagged more than two gifts, of course, but the raw footage proving such a claim remains elusive. And after installing the JBL speakers into the upper corners of the music room, and after installing speaker stands for the rear speakers I already had, and after making the hard choice between a big-ass bean bag and a comfy leather recliner to properly center myself in the audio field (R.I.P., big-ass bean bag), there was only one missing piece: the Apple TV 4K unit. So for me, 2024 was the year I streamed a lot of music in Atmos through Apple Music, surrounded by new tunes and old bops in thrilling new dimensions. Some might say you don't need surround sound, 'cos the two ears + two speakers modality has been dandy for a while now, but that's like saying you don't need ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Natural's Not In It

  For nearly seven years on the button, Courtney and I lived on Perch Lake, just outside of Gaylord. Right next to Perch Lake was The Natural Golf Course, eighteen holes that twisted and turned through the best nature that the 45th Parallel could offer. The picture above is the view of the first green, and if you left the wooden bridge to the right and briefly ambled through the woods and over a rusted metal fence, you'd get right to our old driveway. Every now and again, an errant golf ball would appear at the edge of our property, like a single egg laid by an itinerant duck. Of the three major elitist sports -- golf, tennis, skiing -- I golfed because the barrier to entry was pretty low and the interest in golf on my Dad's side of the family was high, from playing the sport to watching it on television on the weekends. As spare clubs were abundant and my growth spurt had yet to overwhelm statistical norms, my grandmother would take prepubescent me to the Roscommon driving ran...
Post a Comment
Read more