The Zanzibar Snails- Introdewcing
(Mayyrh Records)
The Zanzibar Snails- Introdewcing
(Mayyrh Records)
From Aural Innovations #37 (Sep 2007)
The Zanzibar Snails are from Denton Texas and "Introdewcing..." is their first CD and it's a recording of their debut performance in a clothing store in a mall in Dallas. The band is Michael Chamy, who I know as a writer for the Chronicle in Austin Texas, Nevada Hill and Mike Forbes. ON AN OBLONG PLANE 29:05 the liner notes don't say who's playing which instrument but there's some saxophone, sine waves, short waves, guitar, drones, broken keys, ebows, toys.....the various instruments are so busy and frantic it kinda takes away from the atmospheric drone setting the other instruments are trying to establish. At around 12 minutes the song starts to establish a nice mood of noise ambience but then it gets kinda eratic and all over the place. You can hear people talking and that usually means you haven't caught their attention!! The music is lurching around with no idea of what it's trying to do! At 19:14 people are still yakking away, the music is simply not engaging enough to get people's attention! This lineup would be better served doing some multi-tracking in the living room! At 21 minutes it catches a groove and the people even shut up a little! At 23:13 it's starting to sound pretty cool, these guys just need some self editing! Everything does not need to be made into a CD! The guitar on this fits better than the sax which is too loud and free jazz to fit with this music! The skronk squawk starts to actually work in the last few minutes but obliterates the other instruments and drone ambience!! INDIGNITY okay, the sax guy is wanting to be all that and he/she's good enough but to me it works against the music! Nice guitar slashes/clanging! As jazz improv it's kinda sloppy and uninspired, as experimental music it's too noisy jazz!! If this band is still together they probably sound 100% better now a year later. At around 5:50 it's starting to fall into place/synch up and sound pretty nice. Ends up sounding a bit amateurish! EGRESS this one has a nice loud rumble that the sax isn't able to walk all over! THE PENDULUM, THE DIRIGIBLE this track is wanting to be nice and droney but again it's too busy and noisy and never allows the music to hit that still eternal now space that this kind of music has to hit to work! I listened to some of the more recent Zanzibar Snails tracks on their Myspace site and the music has evolved quite a bit from this first show, keep working it guys.
For more information you can visit the band’s web site at: http://www.myspace.com/zanzibarsnails
You can also visit the Authum Records web site: http://awthum.com/
Reviewed by carltoncrutcher@gmail.com