Great music, like great movies, can take you to another world. Instrumental synth-based duo Zombi work their transporting, soundtrack-oriented magic on the sublime, cinema-literate Direct Inject (Relapse Records).
A special, special treat, especially for fans of seventies and eighties synth rock and aficionados of film score legends such as John Carpenter, Goblin and others of that horror-adept kinship, this record is also vibrantly contemporary – very nicely retro, but no mere exercise in niche nostalgia.
Pittsburgh-formed Zombi are Steve Moore (bass, guitar, keys, saxophone) and AE Paterra (drums, keys). Their modus operandi involves lush swathes of synths, burbling cascades of looped, repetitive riffs and nailed-down vibes which build and soar to a crescendo with added layers of instrumentation. Paterra is a real powerhouse on drums without off-kiltering the delicate balance of mood and atmosphere.
The pacing is often restrained and midtempo but this leaves valuable space to suggest emotional baggage, existential angst and on-going cerebral activity.
The upped intensity of the heavier, rockier tracks helps accentuate the contrasts between light and dark, while emphasizing Zombi’s ability to grip and tighten, capture and release.
“So Mote It Be” puts the grist to the grind, recalling the laidback, urban-aware rhythmic nous of Sleaford Mods’ Andrew Fearn.
The propulsive “Improvise Adapt Overcome” lifts the tempo, promotes the beat, ups the ante, Paterra’s splashes and fills thrillingly punctuating the sheer drama.
The metal riffy world ends in a jiffy, never iffy “The Post-Atomic Horror” which batters into your life like a mutated triceratops breaching the final defensive wall of a shattered, smoking, dystopian city.
“Insurmountable Odds”, another of the rockier tracks, sounds like Rush in their keyboard-heavy phase (there are some very Rush-type noises on the opening title track, too). One can almost hear Geddy Lee on Rush’s Subdivisions, singing: “In the high school halls … In the shopping malls …”
Malls are a big deal for Zombi – the band name comes from the Italian title for George A Romero’s Dawn Of The Dead (1978), with music by aforementioned Dario Argento pals Goblin, and Moore has confessed in interviews to growing up in the Pittsburgh suburb of Monroeville, where the mall-set Dawn was filmed.
Moore and Paterra, now twenty-plus years together as Zombi, are no strangers to film score work themselves, but it’s the nods to the indisputable greats that will have movie fans purring with delight.
Their music could soundtrack a William Friedkin or Michael Mann opus, and the Space Rock of “Sessuale II” echoes the jazzy, smoky, sultry elements of Vangelis’ Bladerunner score, conjuring up more majestic widescreen vistas.
Veteran director and composer Carpenter (Assault On Precinct 13, Halloween, etc.), has, of course, embarked on a second career of non-film music with his family-recruited, Post-Rock electronic band and their Lost Themes records, which the Zombi sound seems to tap into.
But, while much Zombi music is reverently derivative, none of the tracks on Direct Inject come across as anything other than independently conceived and completely realized compositions, many of which reportedly began as improvisations and spontaneous jams.
Sheer class.
Buy the album here:
https://zombi.bandcamp.com/album/direct-inject
9 / 10
CALLUM REID