Zs — Grain

Avant-garde, experimentalists Zs return with a new EP entitled “Grain” on Northern Spy Label. Much has been said and written about Zs new line up of Sam Hillmer, Greg Fox and Patrick Higgins and their seemingly new sound. Though I don’t have a basis for comparison. Truth be told,  my experience with Zs is thin at best. To my recollection the only piece of music I ever owned of theirs is the 7” on 31G. Of course, sometimes going into a review with a clean slate is not necessarily a bad thing.

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!