Those apt to go exploring on the fringes of the musical world, those liminal places that defy the usual generic tags and seem to be the haunts of music makers taking their craft to its illogical conclusion, will know the name Jeremy Moore from the slightly disturbing sonic soundscapes he makes as Bell Barrow. Given the sound that Zabus makes, anyone familiar with his work will not be surprised to find him leading the sonic charge here, too.
But whereas Bell Barrow always felt more improvised, a recording of what happened, and just happened to happen, in the precious minutes after he pressed record, Shadow Genesis feels somewhat more planned. That said, it is still a sound that wanders through psychedelic sonics and trippy, dark ambient soundscaping, in short, avant-gardening at its finest, but it does feel as if Zabus planned to travel these realms rather than falling accidentally into its darker corners whilst passing through on their way to…well, who knows.
Joined by members of Gorazde and Zero Swann, Moore leads the collective through five songs built on a languid, lysergic, and trippy vibe, almost as if each song is the soundtrack to various drugs of choice.
If “Grafhysi Fyrir Alla” is a drifting and dreamlike acid trip, all fracture and floating, with shards of shimmering intrusion seeming to rip through the song’s fabric in startling ways, “Tearful Symmetries” is slow and claustrophobic, the ketamine plunge to the earlier Electric Kool-Aid Sonic test. In its vocals, you can also hear Jim Morrison’s death rattle drifting back across the ether.
And by the time you reach the title track as the final act, its spaciousness and almost decayed elegance come as a welcome respite from the sonic highs and lows you have been subjected to. Here, music in its most fractured and fascinating form is made whole, or just solid enough just as it breaks down into it’s constituent sonic atoms.
It was a strange experience, but what else did you expect? But also music that pushes boundaries, not just the boundaries of what music is and what it can be, but also what it can do to the mind and where it can take us next. I’m not sure where I went, but I can’t wait to go again!
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