zombie zombie - a land for renegades
a couple of years ago i ended up in london on a saturday night.
footloose and carefree i found myself at a gig involving some bands i had never heard of.
the headline act was called thrones, and the support were zombie
zombie.
as it turned out, the headline act will go down as one of the most dreary godforsaken experiences of my life.
a big man from a way cool band just droning on his big fuck off ornate bass guitar and adding some effects.
there is no denying it, this was not a fun saturday night out soundtrack.
yet somehow the haircut brigade (of whom there were many !) managed to groove and dance to the tuneless dirge thus proving the drugs do work.
however, prior to this mood killer were the french duo, etienne jaumet and
cosmic neman aka, zombie zombie.
consisting of just a drummer and a keyboard player, the band just gave it all with their elongated
tangerine dream-esque grooves.
it was fun and rather wonderful for someone who saw the mighty t’dream back in the early 80s to relive the joys of basic repetitive mechanical music in such unexpected circumstances.
so, when the bands new album dropped on the mat earlier this week i was interested in hearing if they had managed to make an album worthy of being placed alongside their obvious heroes.
unfortunately the honest answer is no.
while the album is different to the current love of electro in its simple synth sequencer driven melodies and driving krautrock grooves,
zombie zombie don’t actually bring anything new and fresh to the table other than an updated cool tag.
yet there is no denying the album does have a definite charm.
when spoken dialogue samples are dropped into what’s happening in the city there is an air of implied creepiness created, though this is temporarily swept away by the
jean michel jarre styled lightness within the next track, before night falls. the mood darkens again as the listener wanders deeper into the album as atmospheres and noises are layered giving a sense of urgency (or are some of these tracks meant to be dancefloor fillers - i’m not sure!).
like the concert, the band have their groove and stick to it with little in the way of variety so if you like one track, then fear not, there’s another on its way.
not only that, from the titles of the album tracks, there appears to be a kind of thread/story behind these 11 tracks that obviously connects back to the bands name involving a nightmarish night out in a city.
basically, i’ve cracked it, this is an long lost john carpenter soundtrack to an unreleased zombie movie isn’t it - and the master tapes have been found gathering dust so a band has been ‘created’ in order to promote it.
the haircut brigade who haven’t delved into their prog loving dads record collection are going to love this as for me, i think i prefer the original source material.
more detail : here