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CD Feature/ Z'EV & David Linton: "Untitled"

  Tobias

So finally they meet. Admittedly, on a global scale not everything that is supposed to happen actually does, but for anyone taking a look at their respective careers over the last decades, it certainly seems as though Percussionist-turned-dance-choreographer David Linton and Percussionist-turned-industrial-icon Z’EV (who both, by the way, are still actively cultivating their percussionist roots) were running concentric circles around each other whose paths were bound to intersect at some point. On November 11th of last year, they performed jointly at the “Lagerhaus” Bremen, where the first copies of this album were offered to celebrate the occasion. For anyone who couldn’t be there – here’s your chance to catch up!

Please note, however, that the material collected here is not necessary a representation of that live set – even though the spontaneous and experimental nature of the music does approximate the immediacy of a stage setting. So does the concept, which sees both artists first serve up a menu of their own, before turning to the other’s output in a process of reworking and reshaping. Z’EV opens the show with an eleven minute spoken word cut-up of the hate rhetoric of Reverend John Mac Arthur over a dust-dry tribal drum solo performance taped by Touch Music founder (and long-time companion) Jon Wozencroft. It is a game of positive perfidy he plays, using the perfect flow and meticulous articulation of Mac Arthur to power his piece, while foiling the smoothness of the words with the mind-numbing war talk. On “Not Nil”, meanwhile, he uses short to microscopic files submitted by Linton to create a lengthy track which opens with disparate elements and slowly merges them into a crackling and spumous river of noise. Linton’s contributions are equally diverse and gripping: First, he delivers a twenty-two minute subliminal drone piece: A deep sine wave lingers in the middle range of the frequential spectrum and is increasingly enriched by motoric sonorities, energetic emery and harshly shimmering harmonics – a fluorescent rough diamond. In total contrast, the last title is a catchy track with a straight-foward rythm and greyish timbres, in which Linton builds up the basic structure again and again with slight variations, trying on dfferent version of the same song in neverending cycles.

Even in the more atmospheric pieces, the duo always keep track of the “flow” of their music, interspersing their ambiances with fluttering grooves and a sense of urgency. It marks the album as an immediate and vitalising effort, which wants to be listened to after you’ve had your morning cup of coffee, not before you go to sleep. What’s more important, it makes this anything but an intellectual performance: Four tracks, four different styles, captivating soundscapes and prominent dub bass lines – are these guys not only out to make you think but to actually entertain you as well? It sure looks and sounds like it on this blessed collaboration of two minds bound to meet.

By Tobias Fischer

Homepage: David Linton
Homepage: Die Stadt Records