Stefan Weisser (Los Angeles, 1951) began playing in 1966 as a drummer in a jazz trio with Carl Stone on keyboards and James Stewart on bass.
He attended CalArts in 1969-70.
In 1975 he joined the group Cellar-M with
Naut Humon, Will Jackson and Rex Probe,
which would later evolve into
Rhythm And Noise
and in 1976 he was living in San Francisco.
At the time a more unique than rare case of tri-schizophrenia (also active as Uns and Z'ev), Weisser was a devotee of “found” percussion, especially metal.
His first solo performance for found percussion ("Sound of Wind and Limb") was held in 1977 at the art space La Mamelle.
Salts Of Heavy Metal (Lust, march 1980), that collects performances in New York and San Francisco, was his debut EP, containing eight short finds of percussive madness.
Production And Decay Of Spatial Relations (198i) was his first completed experiment in continued cacophony;
Contexts And Poextensions can be played at any speed.
Elemental L (a single of 1984, also featured on the compilation My Favorite Things) is a tornado of dissected metal distorted via phasing.
The meaning of his art is condensed in Elemental Music (Subterranean, Feb. 1981), a long, purely percussive live improvisation, and in
Schonste Muziek (Dossier, 1986), in which he also plays (or, rather, reverberates) chains and barrels.
50 Gates is a 24-minute improvisation recorded in Amsterdam (1984).
The first recordings were reissued with a digital remix as Production And Decay Of Spacial Relations vs. Reproduction And Decay Of Spatial Relations (may 1981 - Die Stadt, 2006).
My Favorite Things is a compilation of works dating from 1979 to 1983.
Brutal, barbaric, and stormy, Weisser's art is a monumental affront to musical civilization. His concrete poems are as cacophonous as anything ever put on vinyl.
In the 1980s he lived in Amsterdam.
During the late 1980s, Z'ev began to focus on a different kind of improvisation,
one that emphasizes duration rather than tempo. Unfortunately, his achievements
were not documented for a long time.
He returned to Los Angeles in the 1990s and dropped out of the music scene.
An Uns Momento (june 1981 - CIP, 2001) collects two works from the 1980s, Life Sentense and Save What?, credited to his alter-ego Uns (white noise and free-form vocals).
The Ghost of One Foot In The Grave (Subterranean, 1997 - Touch, 1991) is a 1968-1990 double-disc career retrospective, proving that the range of his experiments was far greater than mere percussive-industrial symphonies.
Opus 3.1 (Soleilmoon, 1999), recorded in 1990, contains twenty brief
sketches for different kinds of percussion patterns.
Ghost Stories (october 1990 - Soleilmoon, 1999), also from 1990, is instead one long
live improvisation that best documents Z'ev's talent.
Heads & Tales (august 1993 - Avant, 1998), credited to Hypercussion,
and Face the Wound (Soleilmoon, 2001) compose a "spoken opera",
one of his most ambitious projects.
His erudite theories on Hebrew philosophy permeate
The Sapphire Nature (Tzadik, 2002), which now targets trance/meditation.
He became prolific again.
Z'ev's collaboration with Norwegian sound artist Lasse Marhaug yielded The Sleazy Listeners (Squirrelgirl, 2003).
Z'ev (Crippled Intellect, 2004) is the soundtrack to a multimedia installation.
Headphone Musics 1-6 (Touch, 2004) mixes both his percussive/metal approach and his minimalist/droning approach.
Tinnitus VU (august 2003 - Touch, 2004), a collaboration between percussion
noise-meister Stefan "Z'ev" Weisser and industrial/ambient composer
David Jackman, better known as Organum,
is a four-part 16-minute suite that careens through the
agonizing metallic fibrillations of the first movement,
the manic scratching of the second movement,
the subsonic frequencies of the third movement,
and the cascading tinkles of the fourth movement.
All in all, it is another misguided example of long-distance collaboration,
in which one artist (in this case Z'ev) is supposed to create interesting art
by manipulating the ideas and the sounds of another artist (in this case, piano
pieces by Organum).
The result is simply naive, childish and pointless. Pointless because at the
end we don't know much of what either artist wanted to tell us. We only know
that CDs are so easy to manufacture that long-distance
collaborations are becoming more and more fashionable.
A bit more interesting is Tocsin -6 Thru +2 (april 2004 - Die Stadt, 2005), a
subsequent full-length collaboration between the two who actually met in
a studio at least to decide what to do. That one too turned into a long-distance
collaboration, as each musician went back home and then separately worked on
the material to produce the album's tracks.
What a waste of talents.
Number One (Touch, 2005) was a collaboration among Z'ev,
Chris Watson and KK Null that manipulated
source material to create noh-inspired compositions.
Rhythmajik (june 2003 - Small Voices, 2005), a CD that bears the same title as Zev's
1992 book, is inspired to the kabala and, generally speaking, numerology, but,
ultimately, it is another exercise in metallic soundsculpting.
Magistral (Southern Lord, 2007) is a collaboration with
Sunn 0)))'s Stephen O'Malley.
Metaphonics (march 2005) contains one 35-minute piece.
Past Life (october 2005) documents a live performance.
Symphony #2 - Elementalities recycles source materials drawn from Ghost Stories (december 2005).
Z'ev/John Duncan/Aidan Baker/Fear Falls Burning (Die Stadt, 2006)
contains Z'ev Elementonal.
Osso Exotico + Zev (Crouton, 2008) is a collaboration with
Osso Exotico: one colossal 75-minute piece.
Spirit Transform Me (Tzadik, 2008) is a collaboration with
Oren Ambarchi.
Forwaard (2007) and Outwaard (2008) are collaborations with
Frans de Waard that consist in manipulating field recordings.
22'22 (Ideal, 2008), a split with Benny Nilsen, contains a
22-minute Zev piece for computer and percussion.
Z'ev crafted the
dark ambient suite of
Sum Things (Cold Spring, 2009) using only the sound of
metallic percussion.
Intervals (april 2009 - Monotype, 2010) documents live collaborations between Z'ev and Jason Kahn (also on analogue synthesizer).
Extra Space, Extra Time (2010) was another collaboration with KK Null.
East African Nocturne (september 2010) documents a live collaboration between Z’ev and Cabaret Voltaire's founder Chris Watson.
Colchester (2011) was a collaboration between Z'ev and Peter "Pita" Rehberg, the product of a monthly file exchange process in 2005.
Ghost Time
(2012) documents a trio with British vocalist and drummer Ken Hyder and British trumpeter Andy Knight
The double-disc Rubhitbangklanghear (Sub Rosa, 2013), documents a performance with Charlemagne Palestine recorded in june 2010.
Z'ev engaged in many other collaborations:
Through Bleak Landscapes (2007) with Herbst9,
Daku (2008) with Bryan Lewis Saunders,
Temporal (2008) with Organum,
Floating Signal (2009) with Simon Balestrazzi, Max Eastley and Alessandro Olla,
Spiral Right Spiral Left (2010) with Merzbow,
Eleven Mirrors To The Light (Cold Spring, 2016) is devoted to 7-minute long drones.
Outer Bounds of Sound (2008) mixed also recordings of religious events.
As/if/when (2010) documents two live performances.
The Deep Path (2011) contains three pieces, each lasting exactly 16:00.
A Handful of Elements (2013) contains five pieces, each lasting exactly 12:00.
Weisser died in December 2017.
