ViTiLiGo review - Ear Conditioned Nightmare

Forgot to share this review of Zanzibar's Tape Drift release ViTiLiGo from the Ear-Conditioned Nightmare blog:

Zanzibar Snails - Vitiligo (Tape Drift CD-R)


Got a batch a bit back from these dudes and haven't gotten around to it yet, but Eric sent me one from his own label and I figured I'd at least cover this one before I get around to the others. Gotta mention as well that Eric's got another new batch out (what a pace...) that looks totally KILLER, so that's surely one to scope. Anyhoo.
Zanzibar Snails are a unit from Texas who serve up a strange brew of improv/drone/experimentalism that finds some nice pockets of madness in their realm. Pretty destroyed stuff from the get-go, with spaced out drones writhing beneath kitchen cleanings and shower songs hummed by people living domestically around the corner. Halfway between a field recording and an Emeralds track at first, but soon veering more toward the drone side of the tracks. Odd though, celeste popping in and out, unexpected little details... like a zoned out Caroliner record maybe? Knaw. Not defunct enough. Like a dream played backwards over a nightmare played sideways? Sure. Track two sounds like a bunch of howler monkeys in a whale kingdom thirty-two leagues deep. Strange string strangles and hums abound before the winds pick up and the waters part. Weirdo stuff.
More or less it's this vibe throughout. The strange mixture of drone and off-the-cuff cram-it-down-your-throat mayhem is a nice one that's surprisingly a rarely employed tactic. Keeps things from getting stale/sounding the same all the time, and apparently even keeps it lively enough for the crowd over at J&J's Pizza, where about two thirds of this disc was laid down. Seems like they like their pizza fried in Denton. Good stuff, and beautiful artwork to boot--layer on layer on layer of screen print so it's thick as ox tail. More to come from the act and of course the label as well.

Womblife on Age of Disinformation, D & N, Zanzibar's "ViTiLiGo"

Excellent & interestingly-penned reviews from the ever-prescient Womblife blog.....

On Age of Disinformation (Mayyrh):
"These mutating oscillations, surges and crackling tones make me think of the frothing pools of analog electronics glimpsed on those early Cluster and Tangerine Dream records, along with hints of harsher noise, radio sounds and early industrial grime worked into the mix. The results are a dark, enveloping mind swirl that ebbs and flows with primordial currents every step of the way. Perfect for rewiring the synapses for a more celestial perception of the absolute. Welcome to the new dark age, my friends."

On D & N2 (Mayyrh):
".... a fractured web of odd found sounds, broken guitars, harmonicas and the like which together sound more raw and abrasive than the excellent debut 3" CD-R and lands them in the same jagged terrain found on Richard Youngs and Simon Wickham-Smith's mythical Lake (which basically sounds like Jandek gone prog)."

On Zanzibar Snails "ViTiLigo" (Tape Drift):
"Boundaries, barriers, matter itself is obliterated within their dark currents. These five tracks offer the expected scrape and scrawl dementia designed to fuck with minds and obliterate egos, and they're pretty spooky at times. In fact, the end results are some of the most cathartic raw noise excursions I've heard from the 'Snails to date .... as the ensemble alternates between cryptic Dadaist noise intervals and full on brain bleeding sonic mayhem"

Thanks to Lee Jackson for the kind & suitably oblique words

Zanzibar Snails "Vitiligo"

out now on Tape drift:

Zanzibar Snails
Vitiligo CDr
(Tape Drift) TD24
"March 09 recordings from this phenomenal and mysterious Texas group with the ability to hypnotize listeners and create a swirling vortex of magical sound. Occupying some nether territory between collective improv, grainy atmosphere building, and structured chaos, Zanzibar Snails follow in the tradition of the great Texas psych dreamers in their quest for exploration. Vitiligo is the disease that turns the black man white (the most famous case being the macabre Michael Jackson), and the word accentuates the close relationship between darkness and light, luminescence and void, order and entropy. The first Zanzibar full-length to feature vocalist/sound sculptress Sarah Alexander. Amazing silkscreened gatefold sleeves (designed and screened by Nevada Hill) in stamped vellum envelopes." - Tape Drift

1. Clock Strikes Zen
2. Entreatise
3. Vainly Clutching (at Feng Shui)
4. Pickapeppa
5. Crème of Sum Yung Zen

Nevada Hill – violin, oscillator; Michael Chamy – oscillators, generators, synth, vocals; Sarah Alexander – vocals, electronics, bells & whistles (tracks 1-4); Sinevil – prepared guitar, speaker manipulations, ortef rendering, throat slitting (tracks 1-4); David Lee Price – vocals, percussion, electronics, melodica (track 5); Seth Sherman – acoustic guitar (track 5)
Trcks 1-4 recorded 3/16/2009 at J&J’s Pizza in Denton, Texas. Track 5 recorded 3/20/2009 at the Salvage Vanguard Theater in Austin, Texas. Produced by Michael Chamy. Images & design by Nevada Hill.

$7 postpaid

Christmas song on Silber comp // New Year's Austin

Zanzibar Snails have contributed a new original Christmas song to Silber records' fine annual free Christmas album series. This year's installment is titled White Silber: A Cold Slow Xmas, (featuring Moral Crayfish, Small Life Form, and Silber standouts Aarcktica and Remora) and is available for free download.

The Zanzibar track is titled "Quartermass," featuring Sarah Alexander on vocals, dulcimer and bells, and somebody has described it as kind of like Christmas eve at Stonehenge.



It's also available for download on our MySpace .



Zanzibar has also been asked to participate in Austin’s annual First Night civic New Year’s Eve celebration. Austin experimental arts organization Church of the Friendly ghost has asked the band to perform on the COFG stage on Ladybird Lake (formerly Town Lake) in the eye of the New Year’s Eve storm. Zanzibar takes the stage around 11pm, following Ghost of Falco (Portland, OR), and Austin’s Geoff Reacher and Cornelius F. Van Stafrin III

Also, the new Zanzibar Snails full-length release on New York’s Tape Drift, titled “Vitiligo,” will be out in late January.

"Vitiligo" is the disease than turns the black man white, and accentuates the close relationship between darkness and light, luminescence and void, order and entropy

Recorded in March of 2009. Featuring vocals by Sarah Alexander. and dizzying screen-printed packaging by Nevada Hill.

Also, a few new reviews of the recent Mayyrh records releases by Zanzibar Snails, D & N (Zanzibar’s Nevada Hill & David lee price) and Age of Disinformation (Aaron Gonzalez’ nightmare supergroup) will be posted soon. All releases now available in the UK though Ikuisuus and in the U.S. through Time-Lag, in addition to www.mayyrh.com and locally in Dallas, Denton and Austin.

Also, recently published is a very nice review of Zanzibar Snails’ “Vanadium Dream” (Phantom Limb recordings) is in the new Sound Projector, the UK’s finest document of the wyyrd & experimental underground from around the globe.

New clips

Here's a couple of new YouTube clips from a show we played in Austin, TX in March

Some of the audio will appear on our new release, Vitiligo, on Tape Drift

The lineup is Michael Chamy, Nevada Hill, David Lee Price and Seth Sherman

The projections you see are from the great Denton-to-Austin transplant Paul Baker

Fall releases ....

COMING IN SEPTEMBER

Two more from Mayyrh Records:

D & N
D & N2
Full length debut from the collaboration between Zanzibar's Nevada Hill and David Price
"all music & sounds on this CD were recorded by Nevada Hill and David Price on a compound in Junction, Texas over 2 days in the 2nd week of July 2008. Once back home, the recordings were then put onto cassette tapes and digital files and mixed together using 2 modified tape players, 2 iPods, and an 8-channel mixer. The final mix was then cut in half, and the 2 halves were placed on top of each other at varying volumes. The final composition was then broken into 9 parts based on sections defined during the recording and mixing process.
instruments: 2 acoustic guitars, melodica, modified Yamaha keyboard, modified drum machine, contact microphone, looping pedal, modified musical elephant keyboard, field recordings, 2x4 boards, ice chest, metal tubes, rock house"

Age of Disinformation
Age of Disinformation
Nightmare supergroup featuring members of Great Tyrant, Zanzibar Snails, Yells at Eels, Tidbits, SUBkommander & Aphonic Curtains. At midnight on May 23, 2008, surrealist impresario Aaron Gonzalez assembled a 6-piece ambient group called Age of Disinformation. The results: a 45-minute cloud of transmogrifying cadmium clouds with mercury lining, mutated voices meshing with dark electronic scree tempered by moments of translucent cognition, paving the way for the formation of the eternal Unimind. The way to evolution is .... disinformation?

And a new Zanzibar Snails release on Albany, NY's Tape Drift label

Zanzibar Snails
"Vitiligo"
"Vitiligo" is the disease than turns the black man white, and accentuates the close relationship between darkness and light, luminescence and void, order and entropy
Recorded in March of 2009. Featuring vocals by Sarah Alexander.