Zu

9:40 pm, inside a smoky pub with an attached billiard room, somewhere in Cagliari. I went in confident, buoyed by having listened to the excellent “Igneo”, for this gig with a band that promised fireworks.

The venue is small, the crowd fairly mixed, with the obvious majority of alt-look guys and girls. The show is opened by a game power trio whose name I only know in translation: “Non ti scordar di me” (“Forget Me Not”). Genuinely good, purveyors of a jagged, Albini-esque rock; my ignorance doesn't let me establish whether they played only covers or their own material, but either way it was a tight, powerful half-hour set. Ten minutes later, Zu finally take the tiny stage.

The start is as I imagined, overwhelming, with the three instruments (sax, bass and drums) kicking off suddenly and simultaneously, spraying out lightning-fast, stunning notes. For anyone who knows nothing about them, Zu play music you could call jazz-noise-core: with jazz instrumentation they chase impossible speeds, frenzied rhythms, hugely intricate times and cross-rhythms, free-jazz flare-ups where every instrument explodes on its own, only to then follow a musical line in perfect sync, or end a track at the exact same instant.

Put like that it might sound like pure virtuosity for its own sake, but what you actually hear is pure energy, even joie de vivre, and you can see it in the band members' happy faces as they duel each other in speed, the drummer pulling a goofy face with his tongue out while he pounds away like a madman, the monster bassist who plays the bass like a guitar, like a keyboard, drawing out of it the most assorted noises, all while staying perfectly on time. For its part, the saxophone (or alto sax) lets out its acidic notes, doing its own thing, as if what his playmates are up to doesn't concern him at all. And the crowd? Perhaps more used to more easily digestible musical forms (read: songs to pogo to), they listen attentively and with bursts of enthusiasm, applause is plentiful at the end of every track, and they're especially wowed by the sheer skill on display from the three musicians.

After a breakneck hour and a half or so, an incandescent finale with an intoxicating rendition of “Beat on the Brat” by the Ramones, sung in a wildly off-key voice with the crowd in raptures. A thrilling show. A band of international standing.

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