I’m currently on my 3rd spin of “Grain” and must say it’s not an easy album to review. First off, there is a lot going on in the 2 twenty minute+ tracks that make up “Grain.” “Part 1”starts off with a fuzzed out, grimey guitar (I think) with some quasi-tribal percussion. Don’t get too comfortable, because that doesn’t last long as the entire track is laid out like a succession of different pieces all strung together. Distinct guitar crooning intricately collides with free jazz styled drumming. Junk rustling mingles with reverberating horns. Glitchy synth-like interludes provide segues to the sounds of malfunctioning radios. collide with fields of radio static. Majestic droning interplays with broken up sonic detritus. Each segment of sound lasts only a matter of minutes before being displaced by a new set of sounds. What the track may lack in flow or cohesion is made up in full by the sheer variety of sonic elements present.
 

“Grain: Part 2” is a far different beast. It sounds far more synth based and cohesive than the former track. The track begins with a series of stuttering synth sounds, fading in and out, constantly changing in tempo and volume. This gives way to a variety of damaged sounding synth beats that at times “almost” approaches something that sounds musical. Lots of good faster-paced, stuttering beats happening here. Next keys meet sonic ambience, that can only be described as a deranged sounding music box. A submerged atmosphere segue-ways into chimes manipulated to great avail. Lot’s of glitchy synths, and other disparate sounds interplay into a sound collage. With the track's final minutes receding into ambient noise once again.
 

“Grain” offers 42 minutes worth of complex, sonic abstraction. I thoroughly enjoyed my first real journey with Zs. The variety of the sounds colliding: free jazz, drone, ambient, noise, tribal percussion, skronk, fuzz punk, and many other permutations is a major selling point, of which consider me sold!