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

Album of the Week: Boredoms - Super Roots 7

I'm surprised I haven't made a post about Boredoms on this blog yet as they're one of my favourite bands. They were formed in the late 80's by former Hanatarash front-man Yamataka Eye, one of the strangest individuals of the decade's Japanese noise scene, which, considering what that scene was like, is saying something.

The group's first few releases were a bizarre mixture of noise and punk-rock, creating a musical experience that confused the hell out of people the world over. However, in the mid to late 90's Boredoms underwent quite a stark shift in musical style, releasing Super ae (blogger won't let me do the cool conjoined letter thing) and Vision Creation Newsun, albums that fused their earlier electronic/noise work with percussion driven Krautrock. The result was nothing short of spectacular, with Vision Creation Newsun in particular sitting as one of my all-time favourites. How this change from noise-punk to psychadelic Krautrock occured can only be explained via the Super Roots EP series (which, at the time of posting is up to 10 releases), which track the bands transformations much more coherently than their full-lengths. That being said, Super Roots 7's release date sits firmly in-between Super and Vision Creation Newsun, so most of the dramatic changes had already taken place.

A minor criticism I have with Boredoms' major releases is that they all seem to go for a little too long, usually clocking around the 70 minute mark. This is a little too much time to be listening to anti-songs as was the case for early Boredoms and can be a little bit much for their later works, unless you're really into it, as repetition is a key part of their music. Super Roots 7 doesn't suffer from this problem as its run time is a slim 33 minutes. So what this means is that you get all the goodness from Super ae and Vision Creation Newsun, but condensed into one easy to swallow package. It really is a fantastic release.

So, does this mean that Super Roots 7 is my favourite Boredoms album? Well, not quite; but keep in mind that not very many albums exist that I would call greater than Vision Creation Newsun. However, if you're new to Boredoms, particularly later-era Boredoms, this is an excellent introductory piece and a worthy edition to anyone's collection.


Runner Up AotW: Natural Snow Buildings - Dance of the Moon and the Sun.

It seems quite unfair to dedicate 4 paragraphs to a 33 minute EP and only mention a 160 minute epic, so allow me to provide a very brief summary of this album. Dance of the Moon and the Sun features an array of short acoustic/folk songs with 10+ minute drone/ambient tracks. It all sounds rather sporadic, but believe me when I say the transition between the two never seem strange. Try not to let the mammoth run-time put you off this, it's a masterful achievement and well worth looking into.

Zond - Zond

Zond have been grabbing the attention of myself and many others after they played an absolutely kick-ass set at the 'Noise Night' for Vivid Live at the Opera House, arguably upstaging fellow players Boris, Melt-Banana and Lou Reed. Frankly put, they were quite incredible (you can download the recording here). So, I decided to check them out a little more by grabbing their self-titled debut album; you can purchase it from The Outpost Store, though I purchased this CD over 2 weeks ago and it still hasn't arrived yet (I downloaded the album as I was getting impatient), so approach with caution perhaps.

But anyway, onto the actual music. Zond play what I would describe as a sort of shoegaze/noise/drone sound that may sound moderately familiar to veterans of the genre, but there's still definitely something new and fresh here so the sound is never really boring. The album sounds large, meaning that a wall of sound really does seem to encapsulate everything else when you listen to it. I guess the closest I could pin it to is a much heavier 'Isn't Anything'-era My Bloody Valentine, but with better drums. Songs like Blue Haze and Stupid Gods really do assault you with a barrage of guitar distortion and feedback, it's pretty damn awesome really.

But the album isn't all about sonic aggression, there are comparatively softer parts, take the song Section 35 where the band utilises samples and other tools to establish a somewhat desolate mood. It works to decent effect, though I wouldn't call these songs as good as the more noise-heavy ones, but maybe that's just me and my bwwwoooooo)))))aaahhh loving ways.

The album closes with Apis, by far my favourite of the album; it's a sublime mixture of powerful percussion with fantastic feedback (hurr durr alliteration). This one is quite possibly a contender for song of the year thus far and, whilst it still probably isn't as good as Have One on Me the song (which, for those of you playing at home, I reviewed a while back), it's definitely in the top 5.

To summarise (short review, I know), I'm pretty excited about this band. They're Australian, they're awesome and it's clear that their guitarists can handle feedback almost as well as drone goddess Wata. It's nice to actually have a little excitement about the current Australian music scene, something that I've been pretty indifferent towards since it was flooded with shitty post-hardcore bands. I'll actually be posting the download link to this one as I know it's more important for a new band like Zond to have people listening to their music, not necessarily paying.

Download (FLAC)