Monolith Cocktail Blog

ALBUM REVIEW/DOMINIC VALVONA

Zohastre ‘ABRACADABRA’
(ZamZam)

Spinning and dancing around the phosphor glowing fire whilst invoking a polygenesis array of pagan, hermetic and galactic deities, the French-Italian combo cast magical spells of progressive, psychedelic, noise, primitivism, electronica and cosmic krautrock on their conjuring sonic Wurlitzer.

Reworking references from each of the duos respective countries into a dizzy and often accelerated kaleidoscope of acid-trip occult ritual and more moody, near eerie, mystical uncertainty, Héloise Thibault and Olmo Guadagnoli combine an electronic soundboard with drums as they hurtle, collide and work a frenzy around the maypole.

Whether it’s a reference to the Herbert cosmology that is Dune, the opening peregrination is anything but Eno-esque or dramatic score-like, but takes in the Silver Apples and esoteric fairground jig on its way to an increasingly thrashed squiggle of lasers. Talking of the sci-fi epic, it’s Bernard Szajner’s alternative Visions Of Dune modular score that’s evoked, alongside John Carpenter, Goblin, Emptyset and Higamos Hogamos on the darker, alien ‘Spleen’: Not so much venting that said metaphor as racing between tempos with paranormal intergalactic menace.  

With a title that Southern Italians will recognize, the spider-bite induced “Tarantella” family of Calabria, Puglia and Campania folk dances is the springboard for the duos hallucinating blend of time-travelling fuckery. An etymology rabbit hole, “Tarantella” is more or less a direct translation of that venomous creepy-crawler, found in Italy’s deeper southern realms; it’s bite said to cause a hysterical condition known as “Tarantism”, which in turn has been used to describe one of the more frenzied dance styles within that folk tradition. It’s usually performed to a more “accelerated” tempo with tambourines. Here, in this form, a mirror-y swirl of some enervated washed-out by time old folklore is retuned through a Fortean generator of apparitions, Faust-like and marching drums, spidery tentacles bleached out on the furnace heat intense clay walls of a Calabria hamlet.

Familiar to French children since the 1950s onwards, the Ronder Et Chanson series of standard nursery rhymes and such is borrowed for the album’s worked-up and wound-up finale. Old-time music with a pleasant melodious nature is sucked into the Zohastre vacuum of drilled, pummeled and dial-twiddling, needle-sticking speed shifts.     

Also on their radar, “the ugly one” ‘El Tuco’ seems to allude to Eli Wallach’s sly despicable character in the iconic Spaghetti Western, The Good, The Bad And The Ugly – although it’s also the name of a mountain summit in Peru. With no obvious sonic connections to this conflicted mercenary, or even the Western genre, Morricone, the music and vibe is a noisy squall of UNKLE and Holy Fuck caught-up in a mayhem of splashing cymbals, knocking drums and drones.

For those seeking to discover some lost tribe of extraterrestrial worshipping acolytes with a penchant for Zacht Automaat, Sunburned Hand Of Man and the Soft Machine then ZamZam Records have you covered with an occult and tripping invitation too good to be missed.