Zu Format

Another from LFTWY, we're up to 2009 here.  The 2010 issue is out now, if you have a couple of quid doing nothing.

ZU – CARBONIFEROUS (Ipecac) 

16 or 17 years ago my friend James announced he’d booked Italian heavy prog-noise act Zu to play in Oxford. It was a last minute arrangement, he’d missed the deadlines for mention in publications, but he threw up a poster or two in the venue. It was a Sunday night. About 12 people attended. James lost loads of money (somehow, the fact that he’d bought the three of them towels for their rider tickled me more than is reasonable). Still, despite that unfortunate red entry in his ledger, the other 11 punters and I had a wonderful time with their baritone sax-led chunk punk action (it was a baritone, but I seem to recall that they, or possibly James, called their style “death bassoon”). 

This 2009 album is as good a way of experiencing their sound as any, and a fascinating sound it is, lead-heavy but fleet-footed simultaneously, squealing sax flayed above fat rock rhythms spattered with digital detritus. They can thump, they can churn, and they can, on occasion, even boogie, dropping discoid hi-hat rhythms into the midst of the bludgeon (and listen to the bass in ‘Beata Viscera’, it’s positively funk-adjacent). ‘Cthonian’ is typical, sounding like a rusty android stretching in the morning whilst a pile driver smashes concrete just outside the window. But, then, maybe ‘Carbon’ is also typical, foregrounding the snorting sax to create a hyperactive grot-jazz hoedown in hell. It’s a surprisingly varied album, with a track like ‘Axion’ being both a head-down speed-industrial pummelling and a pensive film noir cue. 

‘Soulympics’ may have an unforgivably naff title, but the glossolalia void growls are gripping, and the pylon-thrum bass sounds equal parts Fugazi and (very early) Therapy? There are even some nearly melodic vocals over the top. ‘Mimosa Hostilis’ sounds like a forklift with diarrhoea. ‘Orc’ sounds like a canine mage casting a spell on some crabs in a rubber glade. I can’t judge sounds any more. The record has destroyed my ears. Play it again. Turn it up. Pass me the towels.