Coming out of the bold Belgian jazz scene of the late twenty-tens, Echoes of Zoo seem determined to sustain the vital sonic energy from those days with their third album ‘Collective Intelligence’. They are a unit whose roots may be connected via other boundary pushing bands Black Flower, De Beren Gieren and Compro Oro but they’ve grown their own distinctive, powerhouse sound. Post-rock jazz, nu-prog jazz, global beats jazz, none or all of these labels apply.
Founder saxophonist Nathan Daems of Black Flower along with guitarist Bart Vervaeck and drummer Falk Schrauwen( both from Compro Oro) plus Lieven Van Pée (De Beren Gieren’s bassist) certainly live up to the new album’s title. On ‘Collective Intelligence’ the quartet ooze understanding and shared inspiration. This is a group in full swing.
Kicking off with Higher Levels, Echoes of Zoo dive straight in. A searing desert blues guitar ushers in those slinky afro meets Ethio beats, timbre rich rhythms conjured up by Falk Schrauwen’s intricate percussive mix. The ground is set for the Daems/ Vervaeck twinned sax/guitar lines to sing out with Van Pée’s bass matching every melodic twist. It’s a sound that seizes attention and pulls you in, like the stun of Acoustic Ladyland’s first punk – jazz thrusts merging with Mdou Moctar dynamism.
Those dusky Sub-Sharan rhythms also feed the fluidity of Wolf Pack Telepathy, a track which prowls menacingly with clipped sax riffs and restless percussive action. Midway through Daems sax caws and chants urging the band to shift into a transcending psych wig-out. It’s hypnotic listening, a trance song with an otherworldly aura.
What’s clear when you first tune into Echoes Of Zoo is that their many sonic influences from around the globe merge together to generate the band’s own sound. They make fusion music as it’s meant to be. The band also underpin their tunes with conceptual fluency, ideas and issues shape their music. ‘Breakout’, their debut in 2021 was framed around the clashing cultures of nature and the human world whereas the inspiration for 2023’s ‘Speech of Species‘ was the intricacies of animal communication. ‘Collective intelligence’ builds on these thoughts with a soundscape which intends to offer some hope and exhilaration. Yes, these tunes are much more than jams. Things never get messy, whatever the sound mosaic.
Flock Logic glides seamlessly from a bubbling surf guitar intro to a punchy Defunkt/No-wave strut and then onto Vervaeck’s snakey sixties psych guitaring. There’s Czukay-nimble bass business, angular Ethio off-beats, twisting Arabian melodics and breezy funk on the busy Multicellularity, where Daems’s treated sax skronking brings things to boiling point. Elsewhere Echoes Of Zoo show that they can decompress and stretch out with equally impressive results. The soulful dub-raga Murmuration brings together a sweeping sax/guitar melody and silky soft chords while Pheramone Jam goes more post skank, upbeat and prog-ish. The hint of Nucleus or those Seventies Belgian greats Placebo wafts through these grooves.
‘Collective Intelligence’ signs off with another more restrained moment, Whale Syntax. It’s a spacious seven minutes, the graceful curl of the melody, rippling tablas, tingling guitars, whispering percussion and Daems’s emotive sax-croon ensuring a memorable journey. Wrapped warm in filmic trip-hop, the tune commands its space with the authority you catch in those seminal EST encounters. An understated but engrossing close to an album that is guaranteed to welcome and reward all-comers.
Get your copy of ‘Collective Intelligence’ by Echoes Of Zoo from your local record store or direct from Zephyrus Records HERE
