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New York-based double trio Zs, featuring two drummers (Alex Hoskins and Brad
Wentworth), two guitarists (Charlie Looker and Matt Hough)
and two saxophonists (Alex Mincek and Sam Hillmer), delivered surrealistic
jazz-rock on the mini-album Zs (Troubleman, 2003).
The stuttering childish Retrace A Walk, mimicking a melody that never
coalesces, represents their harmonic low-end, whereas the chatter-box of
Olympics evokes Canterbury-style prog-rock.
The real treats are
Slalom, that slowly builds to a climax through a methodic minimalist repetition of patterns by each instrument, each playing a different pattern;
and the 16-minute Mimesis, that dispenses with the fractured interplay
and delves into a slow, stealthy, pensive and almost sleepy form of polyphony.
The EP Karate Bump (Planaria, 2005) added the virtuoso horn concerto
Karate and the subdued post-rock meditaiton of Bump.
Buck (2006) reenacted a few pieces of the old repertory and previewed
others.
Arms (2007) contains another piece based on intricate
minimalist repetition, B Is For Burning,
and the
first piece with vocals, Nobody Wants To Be Had, in which
their frantic singsong interacts with a tidal wave of collective pounding.
The music seems to be more jovial than high-brow.
A funny game of contrast and imitation, Balk, is the introduction to
the eleven-minute I Can't Concentrate, that toys with clownish and
self-parodistic ideas.
The simple Except When You Don't Because Sometimes You Won't is
a manic, tribal case of babbling and chirping.
But then the album ends with the nine-minute Z Is For Zone, whose
stream of ringing bells and praying vocals evokes a spiritual trip
through an enchanted forest.
The EP Hard (2008), containing the 15-minute Hard, started a mutation towards a less demanding kind
of music. Paired down to a trio (Hillmer on sax, Greenberg on guitar, Ian Antonio on drums), Zs embarked in the
The EP Music of the Modern White (2009) contains a two-part suite.
The first part juxtaposes spastic metallic percussion against
cacophonous howling saxophone and fibrillating space guitar until it
decays into a murky wind. In the second part a hysterical saxophone fights
against an electronic drone before a solo of (what appears to be)
hand clapping, ending with feral guitar sound over frantic percussion
and droning om-like saxophone.
Hillmer was the only constant throughout the various metamorphoses of the band,
and the only surviving member on
New Slaves (Social Registry, 2010), a parade of sophisticated
constructions:
Concert Black is a ticking merry-go-round that whirls around itself
like a Moebius loop;
the percussive ballet Acres Of Skin sounds like
Zev performing a Brazilian batucada;
Gentleman Amateur is just one thick buzzing drone;
the abstract watercolor Don't Touch Me is almost musique concrete;
and Masonry delves into crystal-calm ambient music.
The 20-minute New Slaves returns to the minimalist repetition of their
early days, but injecting into it
grotesque and catastrophic overtones that lead to a hyper-tense finale.
A two-movement 23-minute suite closes the album:
Black Crown Ceremony I - Diamond Terrifier, a subdued piece of
improvised saxophone mumbling over whispered drones; and
Black Crown Ceremony II - Six Realms, in which the drones move
to the foreground and become a shapeless slowly-moving mass with ghost-like
features (possibly their all-time peak of pathos).
New Slaves II - Essence Implosion (Social Registry, 2011) is a remix
album.
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