Zu

With their performance on Friday, February 23rd at Unwound in Padua, Zu delivered one of their most successful shows in terms of audience turnout (a packed venue, an endless queue at the door). The most striking aspect of this first live show for the 2009 tour, as well as the opening concert of the "Carboniferous" era, is in any case the stylistic direction taken by Luca Mai, Massimo Pupillo and Jacopo Battaglia, now fairly distant from the academic yet brutal jazz-core virtuosity of the "Igneo" era, and instead closer to a haunting noise-core in full alignment with the dictates of Mike Patton, now their official producer, and his label Ipecac.

Mangia Margot, the support band based in Malo (Vicenza), have also undergone a transformation. Having let go of their guitarist (replaced by "noise-player" Roberto Zanini), with whom they used to pursue a distinctly Zorn-esque idea of collective improvisation, Andrea Colbacchini (bass) and Luca Brunello (drums) now devote themselves to Ruins-style free-core jamming, randomly interspersed with electroacoustic interludes, using gear and distortion pedals to freely bring into assonance-dissonance with unconventional instruments (sheet metal, found percussion, etc.).

With the Roman band's turn at the helm, the intentions behind "Carboniferous" are clear. The transformation is complete, even radical: the proverbial dissonant interplay of the old Zu has morphed into a suffocating cauldron of distortion and pounding cadences, something that recalls Unsane and something that recalls Neurosis, while at the same time setting itself apart through sheer intransigence and nimbleness. Even the electronic apparatus (an industrial digital loop precedes their entrance), handled by a Battaglia who's increasingly the mastermind of the group, lends the music an alien quality.

The role of the skilled drummer as the band's fulcrum is confirmed once again on his main instrument: his relentlessly metronomic time signatures land like a wave of destruction, especially when compared to the impeccable improvisations of the "Igneo" live shows. Their metronomic noise-core is thus enriched, and also contradicted, by a direction that's no longer quite as lively, though it has retained that same liveliness's extreme unpredictability. Having set aside their free-jazz influences, the trio still draws from those same free-jazz breaks and open chords to produce a continuous, cacophonous convoy, broken only by sudden tempo changes or irrational flashbacks to their old open-ended jams, which occasionally surface out of nowhere in the middle of a piece ("Carbon", "Axion").

Even their stage presence, compared to the old Zu's highly improvised live shows — where the audience too was asked to provide an almost indispensable warmth in return — has become downright chilly. Massimo Pupillo's bass is disfigured by a pedalboard of effects, distortion units and compressors that triggers acoustic reactions bordering on rejection. Luca Mai's sax is even sidelined in certain passages ("Ostia", "Beata Viscera", the live set's encore), and at times is used almost as a percussion instrument in an attempt to carve out some originality within an otherwise monolithic wall of noise, one of rare intransigence and perpetual dissonance. The band finally leaves the stage amid a freely floating electronic hiss, to which they return for the concert's only encore.

Like it or not, this is the 2009 incarnation of Zu, an evolution that began with the convoluted rhythms of the Spaceways Inc. project, the dozens of collaborations (not least those with Okapi and Dalek), that passed through the traditional cadences of Ardecore's folk songs, and ended up with the split with Teatro Degli Orrori. The audience appreciates the trio's immense power, responding with fervour to every piece. Paradoxically, the colder their sound becomes, the more positive the response the band receives. Or maybe this is simply the result of one of the most interesting acts on the peninsula, engaged in a constant search that keeps questioning the artistic milestones it reaches time after time.

font size="1">(Photos courtesy of Mattia Girardi)

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