ZU

best band i saw at ATP all weekend. Sweaty roman prog-jazz for spazzy drums, doomy bass and squonky saxxx. Their upcoming album, Carbiniferous, is the best 2009 record I've heard thus far (*and OMGWTF!!!11 i've heard the Animal Collective album LOLFIRSTOMG*).

Do these dudes every play America? I'm totally in love with them. It's like Rush's YYZ reimagined by Karp.

http://www.myspace.com/zuband

LOVED The Way of the Animal Powers from a few years back. Never followed up by checking out anything else, dunno why, but that one crushes.

kinda like shining + melvins

Great act, saw them open for Nomeansno back in 2006.

I skipped on them like twice a few weeks ago and I regret it a lot

i was hoping this was a Lady Zu thread :-(

Need to hear Carboniferous - CDs I've heard/owned have been merely *good* but I've seen them in a tiny basement, a 500-capacity venue at a Joe Lally show attended by 20 people and the ATP show mentioned above, and they've smashed it every time

I've seen them several times over the past few years, and they're so much better now than they used to be. they've always been brilliantly imaginative, but the spindly, wiry, awkward aspect of their music has been replaced by vast quantities of sheer physical power, and it really suits them.

I interviewed them a while back too, and they're thoroughly affable and inspirational guys, who've used uncompromisingly difficult (in both senses) music as a means of escaping from a harsh urban environment.

sadly, I missed them at ATP due to babysitting duties, which tears me up inside. by all accounts their set was amazing.

http://krakow.zenfolio.com/img/v1/p673117640-3.jpg

Stereo, Glasgow, 13th March 2008

Slightly weird colours, but...

that was march?! egad. seems like only yesterday. next stop: graveyard.

nice photo, k.

kinda like shining + melvins

Dead on. What an album Carboniferous is, I spun it last night and was floored. It also sort of reminds me of the Swedish jazz trio The Thing, who are equally as intense.

I knew these guys a few years back, toured with them a bit and they are indeed really good people. I actually found their music a bit over-fussy back then but I've heard from a few sources that they've improved a lot so maybe I'll check 'em next time they play London. I know they've been touring and recording a lot for over a decade now so it's good to see it starting to pay off.

"Do these dudes every play America? "

I booked a west coast tour for them in early '07. They were fucking awesome.

Will look out for the new one then. I like Animal Powers but some if it seems a bit mannered. Speaking of The Thing, if I recall correctly there was some collab between Zu and Mats Gustafsson?

I was probably thinking of the Original Silence lp. which looks pretty cool actually.

xp the zu/gustafsson album is called 'how to raise an ox' and it rules mightily.

xp the zu/gustafsson album is called 'how to raise an ox' and it rules mightily.

I'm going to look for that, thanks for the tip.

my god, but carboniferous is amazing. so powerful and physical, intricately clever but compulsively danceable. not a million miles from lightning bolt in places...only heavier, nastier, clevererer, groovier. everything crunches together in one massive brain-and-body assault. it's a huge quantum leap from their other albums, and that's really saying something.

album of the year, I tells ya, album of the year.

I think he likes it.

We are adding some west coast dates this Spring...

m to the g OTM...

the only album i like more right now is the Antony.

(in before multi-page post by LJ)

This is pretty good! By which I mean that every track individually is GREAT but as yet I'm finding my attention wanders mid-album. Hoping more listens will sort that out, though.

new Rock-A-Rolla magazine features Zu on the front cover:

http://rock-a-rolla.com/main/

http://rock-a-rolla.com/main/wp-content/rockarolla18web_01.jpg

so getting this record

rock-a-rolla xp: niiiiiice. first time I've seen that. wonder who's scribing the interview?

very good album indeed!

Thanks for the link!

tis great

I always like the photos in that magazine too. Cough, cough.

lol

new album is freaking great.

I always like the way their cover stars and main features are even more predictable than NME. Cough, cough.

Anyone know why it's named after the first Judas Priest album? I've always been curious.

I'm glad I've lived to see the day when Zu are considered a predictable choice of cover star.

Take y'point but I still stand by mine

fair enough, but given that RaR is the only newsstand mag giving any sizable attention at all to bands like zu, dalek, grails and secret chiefs (to name some recent cover stars), I could care less that they're allegedly 'predictable' choices, even if that were indisputable.

great stuff, though i wonder if theres more depth in here beyond skilled instrument playing (which is great for itself, but for me not always enough)

there's also rocking.

better late than never i'm hearing Carboniferous, and yes it's a beast. unlike their other stuff i've heard here they go more often ROCK than WEIRD which is a good thing for them. not to say it isn't weird and scary enough in places

The rock to skronk ratio on Carboniferous seems just right. The older stuff was tipped to the skronk side a little too much for my tastes.

Ah man that saxophone

Reckon the saxophone is the most underrated and underused rock instrument

some discussion of rock usage of saxophone here.

http://thequietus.com/articles/17252-listen-new-music-from-zu