The Breakdown
Pounding into January with the irrepressible Ruptured Records and a debut album, ‘Phase 1’ from a new collaborative project Zone Null, featuring bassist Tony Elieh and electronic composer/performer Burkhard Beins. Elieh has long has been a pivotal contributor to the Beirut alt rock scene having been a member of the seminal noughties band Scrambled Eggs, while Beins’s focus on percussive electronic music has made him a renowned figure in the outer-sonic world. So this sound making partnership between the two artists arrives with plenty of anticipation and a tingle of curiosity.
From the first lacerating moments of Trastrizas it’s clear that Zone Null’s ‘Phase 1’ is a weighty proposition. This is high intensity, free form electronic improv music which evolves into an epic noise ceremonial. Beginning with grizzling fuzz bass rips, catapulting chord pulls and elemental shards of voice from third contributor, vocal artist Sarmen Almond, you wonder whether the piece will find some equilibrium. When the plunge comes you are taken into a cavern of deep bass harmonics then through a sound tunnel where pulses emerge and darker voices groan. The scenarios curdle together as Trastrizas flows on until we seem to reach air. A distant riff trundles forward with hypnotic constancy while a chink of melody rings zither-like. Almond’s extraordinary vocal imagery is key to the impact of this track, a voice of inner expression, shamanic, visceral and closing with a full soulful wail as the piece disintegrates. Having met her while they toured in Mexico, Beins and Elieh sensed the added dimension her input could bring to their Zone Null soundscape. They were right. There is something powerfully alchemic about this combination, it’s as compulsive as Dis Fig’s recent encounters with both The Body and The Bug.
From here the focus shifts slightly to the interactions between Elieh and Beins. Their premise for Zone Null was to explore the possibilities of restricted musical hardware, each using a bass guitar and electronics then connecting the elements through improvised interaction. That may sound restrictive but the soundscapes the pair create don’t lack scope, dynamic or momentum. These pieces may explore the long form but their inner tension keeps the listener locked into every twisting minute.
Of all three pieces on ‘Phase 1’ Anthracite settles most readily. The pulse is more prolific here, a hypnotic march, one bass line springing off the main riff to make harmonic patterns. Taking a more layered approach on this piece, Zone Null allow their sequences to intermingle. They spontaneously build a wall of sound for their distorted fretwork to gnaw at ferociously without puncturing the flow. Ingeniously even the most mundane component grabs the attention with some persistent electronic crackles carefully varied by intensity and timbre. Eventually the track’s whole progression slowly becomes compressed into a closing drone which quivers with a Lawrence English level of micro-tonal detailing.
The throbbing There Will Be Poems which concludes ‘Phase 1’ thrives on Burkhard Beins percussive sensibilities. It’s as if a massive industrial machine is chugging into motion with a nod maybe to psychedelic seventies kosmische. When the piece pauses it almost pants for breath, enters into a less stable, disintegrating state then revives in a pressurised gush of white noise. As hypnotic industrial techno goes There will Be Poems shows no restraint until the stuttering, glitchy coda stills to a sombre bass line.
With ‘Phase 1’ Elieh and Beins take the bass guitar to new territories with a level of invention last heard on Farida Amadou’s stunning ‘When It Rains It Pours’ but as with that album there’s more than ingenuity to engage you here. Zone Null’s intense long form improvisations shape absorbing dramas which you can never quite unravel and that’s the music’s intoxicating secret.
Get your copy of ‘Phase 1‘ by Zone Null from your local record store or direct from Ruptured Records HERE
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