With a name like Zeus B. Held, this German musician/producer sounds more like some sort of superhero or a character from some seventies sci-fi novel. And in a way, he is a musical superhero, especially if you're into wild, seventies jazz prog, seeing as Zeus was a member of the German heavy prog outfit Birth Control. Post Birth Control, he also had a storied career as a producer, including, maybe most notably for aQ folks, producing the album Nice Mover by Gina X Performance, a record we raved about right here a while back (and one that former aQ staffer Pam described as "the best kind of slutty Dracula music!"). Held also recorded and produced a Hawkwind album (more superhero stuff!), as well as records by Men Without Hats, Nina Hagen, and Transvision Vamp. Furthermore, he collaborated with Guru Guru, and members of Can, and he even remixed Gary Numan!
And yet somehow, in the late seventies/early eighties, Held still found time to record three amazing solo records (Zeus' Amusement, Europium and Attack Time), from which the tracks on this comp are culled. And those tracks are all over the sonic map, running the gamut from tripped out avant kosmische drift, to vocodered Euro-disco, to freaky future classical, to electro-prog pomp, to weirdo new wave pop (specifically a WTF? Beatles cover, that features Gina X on vocals!). It's crazy stuff, a twisted funhouse of electro-robo-muppet-funk-kraut-pop that will for sure appeal to fans of Bruce Haack and Felix Kubin and Gina X and Giorgio Moroder. Heck, it even has Jaki Liebezeit from Can playing drums on a couple tracks! Ridiculously cool.
Like all Medical releases, beautifully packaged, and this time pressed on eye popping, yellow/orange solar flare colored vinyl!
If you're a follower of the aQ list, you know that there's this retro-but-fresh Canadian metal band called Iron Dogs, that we think is really, really special, eh? We've raved about their two records of punked out, DIY old school heavy metal worship - in fact, we made their Free & Wild album a Record Of The Week about a year ago. Well, the singer/guitarist in Iron Dogs, a talented & busy bloke with the very punk name of Jo Capitalicide, is also in a few other cool bands, one of 'em being the freaking great Zex, who sound kinda like a cross between Iron Dogs and the Rezillos, because compared to Iron Dogs they're more punk, more poppy, and they've got a female singer. This is their debut album, which also has to be aQ Record Of The Week for sure, 'cuz they've waxed a classic, we think, when it comes to records with a "youth gone wild in the streets", us-against-the-world vibe, that will make you feel like a 16 year old runaway again. Heck, we've been wanting to list something by Zex for a while, ever since we first heard 'em, but their two 7"s sold out too fast. But now we're so happy Magic Bullet has just released a US edition of their full-length on both cd and vinyl that we can at last stock and shout about.
Zex, who like Iron Dogs are based outta Ottawa, find Jo playing guitar alongside Gab Sex (bass), Tasha G (drums) and Gretchen Steel (vocals).
On Fight For Yourself this crew crank out ten catchy 2-to-3 minute long blasts of energetic, anthemic streetwise punk with a NWOBHM inspired flair. (That's New Wave Of British Heavy Metal - though plain ol' New Wave is a factor here too!) Really, take Iron Dogs, keep the early Iron Maiden influence, but add a bunch more Ramones, maybe some Fuzzbox, the aforementioned Rezillos, some Joan Jett perhaps, and you've got Zex. So Iron Dogs fans oughtta dig this if they're into punk at all; really quite a few of the tracks, like "Savage City", could easily have been Iron Dogs songs, they've got the same guitar tone, same riff-writing knack, same gnarly, twangy Strat soloing from Jo - but when the vocals kick in, instead of Jo's charmingly rough yobbish yowl, you get Gretchen's more melody-capable, obvious-frontperson-worthy singing, which is tough & sneering enough to convey commanding metalpunk attitude, while also sealing the deal on the uplifting pop side of this band. And, she's got zex appeal (ba-dum-bump). Gretchen's vocals and Jo's riffing make for, at the end of the day, quite a poppy listen indeed - just spin songs like "XXX" or "Wanderlust" and dare them not to get stuck in your head, especially when the choruses (often with gang vocals) roll around. This is one of those albums where it was tough (or easy, depending on how you look at it) for us to pick which tracks to make our sound samples for, 'cuz they're pretty much all killer.
Obviously, we got into Zex 'cuz we love Iron Dogs, and Zex have so much of the same sound & spirit. But even if we'd never heard Iron Dogs, we're pretty sure this still would have grabbed us. So for those of you not yet hip to Iron Dogs, well, do you like, say, the garagey metalpunk of Zig Zags? Or, do you the ripping girl-powered power pop of Ex Hex?? Fans of either could totally get into this. For that matter, d'you just like the teenage excitement of some good ol' rock n' roll? Then check this out. We've been spinning it so much that you could almost call us Zex addicts...
FYI, vinyl version we have at the moment is limited colored (clear, actually) and includes insert with lyrics and show fliers, whereas the cd comes in a slim cardboard sleeve.
Zounds! Zoinks!! ZIRAKZIGIL!!! "Z" is the letter of the week here at aQ thanks entirely to this absolutely enormous slab of cosmic progressive supersludge courtesy of Portland's very heaviest Z-word. Worldbuilder is only the sophomore full length from these grizzly wanderers of the astral plane (after their debut "Battle Of The Peak" which we rightfully raved about back in 2013), but already pulses with a wild streak of spiritually charged confidence usually reserved for bands of the Neurosis, Mastodon, Om ilk. What immediately sets Zirakzigil apart from some of their simpler minded sludged-out contemporaries is the level of musicianship on display. While this certainly bears similarities to the aforementioned Neurosis (especially in the vocals) and perhaps also to bands like Isis or Yob, Zirakzigil eschew any kind of hypnotic repetitive approach, instead peppering their songs with whirling stop start time signatures and off kilter drumming, dramatic twisting structures and dizzying transitions, at times even sounding like some jazz-fusion answer to monolithic post-metal. But as wonderful and thrilling as all of that weirdness is, it only serves as a compliment to something even grander. That's Zirakzigil's real secret weapon, distraction. The awesomeness of the more frantic passages, with all their warped musicianship, frenetic rolls & confounding riffing, provides the ultimate disarming contrast to Zirakzigil's truest strength: Those Enormous. Epic. Riffs. When Worldbuilder really opens up and simplifies, it becomes the stuff of mountain crumbling legend - the kind of thing you want to ride out into battle and die to (whether that's on horseback or in a starship is unclear... it seems like either one could apply equally to this record!) It's an approach not dissimilar to Elder's newest album (which we also made ROTW recently!), but Zirakzigil are way more immediate and aggressive. Confrontationally spacey if you will! The way every song seamlessly leads into the next (four tracks all running at 13+ minutes by the way) only makes the experience all the more massive, like being torn slow-motion-asunder by an enormous hour long suite of galaxy swallowing black hole orchestration - a pummeling meteor shower of multicolor Northern Lights heavy, heavy, heavy metal. Glorious, twisted & very recommended.
This is one of those reviews that's both so exciting yet daunting to write. Trying to describe in mere words how a record has totally taken over our ears and left us in awe of its power, intensity, not to mention its incredible sound. We have always loved what we've heard from Zola Jesus in the past. But something has changed and the bar has been raised seriously high with this new ep. Without a doubt, one of the most mesmerizing and entrancing records we've heard all year. Zola Jesus has left behind the layers, noisiness and muddled sound of her past efforts and found her way to something much more clear, emotional, epic, haunting and so precisely focused.
There is definitely something to be said for quality control. The six songs on Stridulum are all practically perfect, not a wasted note, not a throw away line, each and every one has already seemed to seep into our subconscious, to get stuck in our head, and to resonate at such a deep level. With a sound like classic '80s Siouxsie revamped for the oughts, dark and ominous with soaring and strong vocal that leave no room for doubt. She means every single note, every single word, every single sentiment , that she expresses with such undying spirit on this record.
In lots of ways this transition to a new more focused and intense sound reminds us a lot of the leap that John Maus made when he released Love Is Real. While his past outings were eccentric, cool and weird, Love Is Real felt like a statement, a totally unique vision that had the ability to capture your attention right away and keep you coming back for more. That's what Stridulum is like, Zola Jesus demonstrates that her music doesn't rely on some sort of noise / FX aesthetic or trendy sound (lo-fi, washed out, layered drones, etc.) but that she is an artist with a truly unique and special vision. Don't get us wrong, we loved her past records and we love so much of the music that has come out in the last few years that is aligned with many of the aforementioned musical trends but there comes a time when you want to hear something that really feels like it has weight, strength and something true to say. More songs than sound, more music, than art.
There is no other way to say it, we have been totally intoxicated by this record. It's under our skin, on the tip of our tongues. It's made its way into our heads and every part of our body. It's both so physically moving and emotionally present. We also think its one of those records that could appeal to so many different folks. People who dig all sorts of sounds: Kate Bush, Fever Ray, Chromatics, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Bat For Lashes, Nico, PJ Harvey, The Creatures, Diamanda Galas, John Maus, Joy Division, Blessure Grave, Jarboe, Bjork, White Magic, Cold Cave, Bauhaus, Patti Smith, etc. With Stridulum, Zola Jesus has really carved out her own unique niche, positioning herself as one of the most interesting, original and exciting music makers in the underground these days. What makes it even more impressive is that she is barely twenty one years old and somehow manages to find time to go to school when not creating these sublime sounds. We're almost scared (in a good way) of what her future holds. This is the sound of someone truly coming into their own and owning their moment with such fierce clarity and hypnotic power. Absolutely stunning!
Wow. A while back a friend of ours at Alternative Tentacles told us that Jello Biafra was all keen on reissuing some ultra-obscure '70s LA punk/glam band who apparently dressed up like space aliens and pretended they were from another planet (it helped that all the band members happened to be fairly short). Sounds, uh, interesting we said, we'll be curious to hear it... Well now we've heard that band -- this band, Zolar X -- and we've gotta say, Jello, thank you! This is freakin' awesome!
Brimming with extra-terrestrial energy, this collection compiles twenty tracks (fewer on the LP version) from three different recording sessions and Zolar X line-ups. Memphis 1976, LA 1979 and San Francisco 1980. All are great. Jello considers Zolar X to be "the missing link between Chrome and the Stooges"...and indeed some of this has that vibe, sorta like Simply Saucer. But the '60s pop background and Bowie-worship of Zolar X's prime movers Zory Zenith and Ygarr Ygarrist Lazor really results in something that was both more bubblegum and yet more metal too. Zolar X's collision of punk and glam, though totally underground, had definite classic, commerical rock pretensions...the vocals sound just a little bit like Geddy Lee of Rush, and the arena-rock guitars and epic songwriting remind us of Thin Lizzy, Queen, and Blue Oyster Cult as well. You'll even hear a little "Cat Scratch Fever" in their song "Moonbeams" we think...and the Beatles in "Blues On Blue".
Now, tongue in cheek it all may be: what to make of a song (a great song!) entitled "I Pulled My Helmet Off (I'm Going To Love Her)"? The lyrics are worthy of Jack Black/Tenacious D! Or a 19-minute rock opera called "Plutonian Elf Story" (this disc's final, amazing track)?? Well you gotta stop thinking like an Earthling and get with the Zolar X program! Yeah, costume-rock bands normally invite skepticism as to their musical worth -- I mean, would you wear spacesuits and Martian antennae if you had *songs*? KISS may or may not be a good counter example, but Zolar X sure is. Silly haircuts, outfits and names aside, they ROCKED. I think the secret is, that they seemed to take themselves seriously. This was no joke band. At least, not outwardly. Reportedly, they even stayed in character when off-stage. Seeing them live must have been incredible, if the color photos in the cd booklet -- and the stories told in the lengthy liner notes -- are anything to go by. It's hard to tell why they never "made it". You'd have thought that the old "take me to your leader" routine would have worked. Oh well. They picked the wrong planet I guess.
And as a side note, we're proud that our record store actually played some small, entirely random part in getting this reissued, as Jello mentions in his liner notes that he bought his first copy of the Zolar X LP out of the bargain bin here at Aquarius, doubtless years and years ago. Maybe we weren't recommending it then, but we sure are now! Timeless indeed. Shoulda been huge. It's time now though...get this!!
Another gorgeous and mysterious collection of lo-fi, ritualistic, minimal, otherworldly psychedelia from Asa Osborn, aka Zomes, one time guitarist for legendary Baltimore hypno rockers Lungfish. And like his former bandmate, Daniel Higgs, the repetition and trancelike orchestrations of those Lungfish songs carried over to his new project. Higgs of course blossomed into a strangely inspiring psychedelic shaman, a wandering troubadour, as likely to perform a laughing solo as he is to do a whole set of solo jaw harp, Zomes became similarly shamanistic, with the minimal cyclical heavy rock of his former outfit transformed into something altogether more hushed and mediative, a series of miniature tone poems, simple melodies, spare arrangements, skeletal rhythms, each track, a simple, slow shifting soundscape of warm whirs, and muted thrum, of ethereal shimmer and bleary shuffle, of reverbed celestial drift and slo-mo kraut-drone dirgery, all the tracks woven deftly into a haunting alien songsuite, a hazy soundtrack to outer space drift and innerspace exploration.
Even more than Zomes' debut, Earth Grid manages the impossible task of being both even more simple and sparse, while being more rich and lush, and somehow more polished.
Earth Grid plays almost like a collection of fragments, each a glimpse into the ether, a peek behind the curtain, any of these songs could have been stretched out to sprawling trancelike raga lengths, but the economy in composition and instrumentation extends to song length too, with each impossibly catch sonic shard leaving us wanting more, at least until we're engulfed by the spirit and sound of the next brief bit of repetitive and meditative lumber and drift.
The record begins with "Openings", which is maybe the most 'rock' sounding Zomes track yet, and almost sounds like a Lunfish song slowed down to a crawl, the beat distorted and lumberingly propulsive, while the main melodies wheezes over a thick undulating buzz. "Pilgrim Traveler" is also drenched in buzz and fuzz (as is much of Earth Grid), and again harkens back to Lungfish, a woozy melody drifts over some thick lugubrious riffing (and it's strange what a similar melodic sense Higgs And Osborne have, must be all the years spent in a band together, cuz much of Earth Grid could easily be translated to Higgs' current sound).
"Melody, The Prism" is one of our favorites, a murky muddied beat, buried under some dark dreamy
low end thrum, a creeping, ominous krautrock lumber, but laced with sweet little melodic trills, but then there's "Stark Reality", a similarly gauzy rhythmic sprawl, and "Youth Of The Beast" which is Zomes at its doomiest, but interspersed amidst all this dark energy, there is plenty of light, dreamy, drifty, sun dappled kosmische folk drift, languid tangles of layered soft buzzing melody and lush expanses of blurred fuzz drenched krautdrone shimmer, at times sounding a bit like the cosmic alien folk of Amps For Christ, and at others, more of a sweetly serene, ethereal swirl, all washed out and spectral, and so fantastically dreamy.
Super striking minimal psychedelic cover art, geometric designs in white tape on a black background. The lp version includes a download coupon too...
The magic of the band Lungfish, was that they didn't approach their songs like songs. More like loops or pieces. Each of their 'songs' was a single riff, locked into trancelike repetition, rife with subtle tonal variation, but ultimately, almost static and incredibly mesmerizing. The band somehow propulsive while managing to not move forward, but instead looping in on themselves. Even Lungfish offshoot duo the Pupils displayed the same affinity for repetition, almost like a stripped down acoustic Lungfish, letting the vocals of frontman Daniel Higgs carry the melody, while the guitar and rhythm formed the mesmerizingly repetitive support.
So when Higgs took off on his own, his music was appropriately cyclical and looped and trancelike, so it seemed the root of Lungfish's sound was in fact to be found in the personal soundworld of Higgs. Or so we thought until now.
Zomes is the solo project of Lungfish / Pupils guitarist Asa Osborne, and the sound nears a remarkable resemblance to the solo work of his ex-partner Higgs. Short tracks, each centered around a single melodic figure, the sound allowed to shift subtly, but ultimately locked into a mesmerizing loop. Whether it's heavily effected guitar, simple muted tribal drumming, chiming guitar harmonics, whether the sound is dense and fuzzed out, or spare and spacious, Osborne conjures up a gorgeous world of trancelike sound. Maybe we were premature in declaring Higgs the music shaman of Lungfish. Perhaps the power of Lungfish stemmed from the shamanistic energy of two like minded musical seers. Zomes seems to make that abundantly clear. However, where much of Higgs' solo work is steeped in crumbling distortion, glowing with a burning intensity, Osborne's sounds seem to do just the opposite, to lope lazily, to drift dreamily. Just as powerful, sometimes almost as intense, almost Lungfish like once in a while, certainly just as mesmeric, but instead of threatening to crumble or explode, they are content to just spread and sprawl, sun dappled and dreamlike, the sound lush in its lo-fi hiss and buzz, the actual instrumentation simple, often a single guitar, and a single drum, sometimes even less, but it's the melodies, it's the timbre and the quality of the recording, the immediacy, the subdued power lurking within these slow soft spirituals, the reveals Osborne to be the musical shaman his past outfits have only hinted at. So gorgeous and sublime, mysterious and so so powerful. Zomes has been spinning NONSTOP around here over the last few weeks, and once you finally immerse yourself in the sounds of Zomes, it won't be difficult to see why. Now we can't seem to stop fantasizing about them reuniting, not as Lungfish, but as some impossibly mind expanding ritualistic future trance space bliss innerspace drone duo. Maybe someday...
We first heard of Zoviet France's latest offering "The Decriminalization of Country Music" back in December; yet it has taken until now for the distribution channels to get into place for this record to finally make its way here to Aquarius. With almost
Zoviet France began 20 years ago as an anonymous collective of musicians who embraced the DIY attitudes of Punk and Situationism, yet found inspiration in Terry Riley's tape mechanisms, Lee 'Scratch' Perry's schizoid dub production, and the wonders of non-Western instruments (tablas, bouzoukis, Tibetan bowls, Egyptian reeds, etc.). While each of their albums hold very distinct aesthetics, the basic ZF sound is a eerie cyclical drone built from a interlocking network of tape loops with dubbed intrusions of the aforementioned ethnic instruments. One of the subtle ties between all of the Zoviet France records is the process of recycling material, in which a handful of discreet sound elements repeat throughout the album within a broad spectrum of recognizability. For an album like "Hessian" it would be the surreal chant "OK, Boys!" and for "Feedback" it would be the distant whir of a sputtering drum machine.
"The Decriminalization of Country Music" is one of the more obvious examples of Zoviet France's recycling process, as they had been commissioned by the Tramway Gallery in Glasgow, Scotland to re-interpret the sounds of the gallery's extensive redevelopment from a desolate warehouse to a workable exhibition hall. While ZF utilizes various construction site sounds and the resonant properties of the room itself, the dominate theme for "Decriminalization" is the sound of a languorous slide guitar, making comparisons to Ry Cooder inevitable. At the beginning of the record, Zoviet France boldly introduces the haunting guitar sounds against quiet static loops and rich drone synthesis. Yet as the album progresses, the guitar's presence becomes more diffuse, with only a few fragments of muffled twangs hovering amidst the post-industrial ambience by the end of the album.
"The Decriminalization of Country Music" stands as Zoviet France's most minimal piece to date, and like all of their records is an amazing, if not required listening experience.
