Friday, August 20, 2010

Album of the Week: Zs - New Slaves


My regular readers (that's right, all one of you) may have noticed that I didn't do an 'album of the week' last week. The reason is, simply, I didn't listen to enough music. Anyway, the point is that now I have, so I can update again before my reader gets restless.

Zs are a avant-garde rock/jazz group from New York (of course) and New Slaves is their newest effort. The band uses a drummer, two guitarists/noise-makers and a saxophonist to create noisy jams somewhat akin to Kenji Haino. Most avant-garde-noise-rock-jam albums I've heard have a tendency to sound a little "samey" by the end but New Slaves, despite being a double album, doesn't suffer from this. The tracks are nicely varied and, while still keeping the same general sounds, explore different territories and sound-scapes, Acres of Skin and the title track in particular stand out as pretty awesome tunes. If you're new to this style of music, then this might work for you (unfortunately, it's not really a genre that has nice introductory-style albums), if so, great. On the other hand, if New York avant-garde is what you breathe in for sustenance every day, then this will tide you over nicely until the next John Zorn release.

Runner-up AotW: Animal Collective - Sung Tongs

3 comments:

  1. I may have multiple personalites, so really I should count as at least two readers - because despite their differences, each one is full of self-importance.

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  2. One of them may even know how to spell 'personalities'

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  3. Looks like my reader count has doubled.

    ReplyDelete