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Zoviet France

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Zoviet France, “Untitled” (Red Rhino, 1982)

This 1982 album was Zoviet France’s second release and has come to be known by a few different names over the years, most prominently “Hessian” (an English synonym for burlap). The reason for that is simple: the original LP was packaged in screen-printed burlap, making it ZF’s first foray into the bizarre packaging that they came to be known for in the ’80s. Of course, the music within is also quite bizarre, even by the band’s own extremely outré standards. There are certainly some clear hints of the faux-tribalism and tape loop experiments that would eventually solidify as Zoviet France’s aesthetic (for a while anyway), but this enthusiastically primitive affair also features some very unexpected twists, such as absurdist humor, recognizable guitars, howled vocals, and (unbelievably) slap bass.

While three decades admittedly passed between this LP and last year’s 7.10.12, it is still somewhat remarkable that roughly the same band is responsible for both, as this clattering, humorous, anything-goes chaos could not possibly be more different than the austere minimal drones of Zoviet France’s current work. The only real constants seem to be a fascination with loops, a deep aversion to anything song-like, a penchant for the cryptic, and Ben Ponton. I suspect Ben and his fellow conspirators (Robin Storey, Peter Jensen, and Lisa Hale, in this case) are probably a bit embarrassed by this period in their development now, but “Hessian” seems like it was probably a lot of fun to record and it makes for a very interesting snapshot of the group’s origins.

The most fascinating pieces for me are naturally the more aberrant ones, such as the opening “Ritual,” which shares a lot of common ground with precursors like Throbbing Gristle and contemporaries like Test Dept. and SPK. After a lengthy introduction of humming machine-like noise and instrumental blurts and squawks, a rumbling, detuned bass bulldozes its way into the proceedings along with an insistent thud-thud-thud beat, a strangled-sounding guitar, and plenty of guttural, wordless howling. It is impressively heavy, but heavy in a messy, unhinged, “noise rock” kind of way, and its formula is never repeated again.

Equally strange and divergent is the closing “Ji Boys,” which combines the album’s recurring sample of a thickly accented (Indian?) man saying “ok boys” with “funky” slap bass, bongos, dissonantly chromatic piano, and stabs of processed guitar. Then, around the halfway point, the bottom drops out and it sounds like a post-punk band jamming underwater with a broken drum machine. In fact, it is so bizarre, anachronistic, and disjointed that it ambiguously rides the blurry line between “inspired deconstruction” and “a bunch of guys messing around in a studio.” In either case, it either sounds like an inept Pop Group rip-off or a hilarious Pop Group caricature. Curiously, the group thought enough of it to expand it when the album was eventually reissued on CD in 1990.

As bizarre as “Ji Boys” is, it still does not hold a candle to the weirdness of “Bring Hessa,” which is little more than the phrase “bring in chiefs!” repeated obsessively. It could easily be viewed as mere filler or a throw-away bit of lunacy, but it is uniquely compelling nonetheless: the main voice is so maniacal and Muppet-like that it makes it very difficult for the other vocalists to continue without laughing, creating a hesitation/stutter that initially seems like fear or a choked sob. Then, around the halfway point, the chant amusingly turns into a frenzied “take out chiefs!” until it finally concludes (with the announcement that the chiefs are now gone, of course). While it definitely offers absolutely nothing musical nor anything more substantial than that at all, I enjoyed it a lot anyway—it is fun to catch a glimpse of such a mysterious and generally very serious band acting so ridiculously (and so atypically human).

The remaining three pieces (“Mudbast Boys,” “Sem Boys,” and “Mounw”) are a bit more traditionally “Zoviet France,” albeit a bit primitive and rooted in rock instrumentation. “Mudbast Boys” is essentially a beatless, dubbier version of “Ji Boys” based upon insistently repeating “ok boys” sample, while “Mounw” is a very minimal soundscape built upon little more than a low rumble and some periodic metallic clatter. “Sem Boys,” however, is a fairly effective proto-version of ZF’s distinctive faux-exoticism despite being executed in the most low-tech possible way (it basically sounds like ragged chanting, someone playing a bucket or hand-drum, and some distinctly unvirtuosic snatches of violin and flute).

As uneven and unsophisticated as it is, “Hessian” is still a remarkably charming effort due to its sheer enthusiasm and naked experimentalism. It should probably be avoided by the merely curious, as it is not particularly representative of Zoviet France’s aesthetic (nor does it come close to approaching their best work quality-wise), but more serious fans will likely find it to be an entertaining historic curiosity. I also found it to be perversely inspiring, as the band clearly had a muddy vision, dubious musical ability, and rudimentary equipment, but made a messy, scrappy stab at greatness anyway and kept at it until they cohered into the iconic entity they are remembered as today. To their credit, they certainly cohered quickly, as the more distinctive and superior Garista was actually recorded the same month (December 1981).

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Zoviet France, “Shouting at the Ground” (Red Rhino (1988)/Charrm (1990))

Despite being one of the most compelling entities to emerge from England’s fertile ‘80s post-industrial scene, Zoviet France remain a largely unheard and somewhat mythical band. Obviously, the main reason for their relative marginalization is that their albums (aside from a few late period ambient works) have historically been quite hard to track down. I suspect that was true even during their prime, as I am certain that I would have bought an album packaged in a canvas sack or between roofing shingles if it had appeared in one of the record stores I frequented as a teen (regardless of who it was by). Thankfully, the magic of the Internet has rescued this lost classic from the cruel fate of vanishing without ever being properly appreciated.

Due to the shadowy and elusive nature of their releases, it takes some serious effort to acquire a complete understanding of how Zoviet France’s sound evolved over the years. Hearing one ZF album does not necessarily provide a reliable estimate of what another one might sound like, as the band went through a number of significant personnel and stylistic changes over the course of their two active decades. 1988’s Shouting at the Ground, however, has managed to emerge by general consensus as as one of the clear highlights in their sprawling and disorienting discography. The reasons for that are self-evident upon hearing it, but it is also significant for being the most listenable nexus at which ZF’s forays into ambient, harsh tape loop collages, and neo-tribalism converged. This particular vein never got pursued as far as it deserved, sadly, as the remainder of ZF’s career is strewn with live albums, compilation albums, deleted albums, long hiatuses, and one-off experiments (like deconstructing Ry Cooder).

The bulk of Shouting at the Ground is composed of very brief sound experiments that often run under two minutes. Rather than feeling like a bunch of prematurely abandoned song sketches, however, they unfold like series of otherworldly, self-contained miniatures. To say they are eclectic would be a gross understatement, as they range from breathy primitive flutes to Eastern strings to dense, insistently repeating tape loop pile-ups. The only conspicuous unifying features are that they are invariably grittily lo-fi and a little bit ominous. 

Some of them can get quite harsh (“Dybbuk” makes me feel like I am being attacked by swarm of vampire bats), but most are meditative or at least hypnotically repetitive. One notable aspect about the hallucinatory and unfamiliar menagerie of sounds gathered is that the vast majority of Zoviet France’s material originated from live instrumentation. The semi-anonymous, ever-shifting cabal of contributors amassed quite an array of ethnic and homemade instruments over the years and recorded untold hours of ideas and improvisations with them (the key to ZF’s unusually organic sound). All those tapes were then sifted through, manipulated, and painstakingly shaped into often wildly different form before ultimately appearing on an album. The amount of time that it must have required to edit and tweak that mountain of raw material without a computer seems almost impossibly daunting and makes my brain hurt.

Listening to the album is disconcertingly analogous to a surreal walk down a long, dimly lit hallway: exotic instrumentation and weird, inhuman loops drift in and out of the aural landscape—just fleeting, disconnected snatches of mysterious soundworlds lurking behind closed doors. The reason that this image feels so apt is that the end of the album feels like a destination has been reached: “Shamany Enfluence” and “The Death of Trees” both unfold into epic, immersive, and evolving vistas. To further belabor my inadequate visualization: a pair of doors finally open and unveil their complete and unsettling contents.

The distorted alien chanting of “The Death of Trees” is pretty engaging simply because it sounds creepily and utterly unearthly, but “Shamany Enfluence” is the album’s clear centerpiece (and masterpiece). Describing it as “ethno-ambient” provides a vague idea of how it sounds, but it is a thoroughly simplistic and misleading one. At its best, it sounds more accurately like a decaying transmission of a forgotten tribe’s mourning ceremony (accompanied by a chorus of psychedelic frogs).  It is at once eerily beautiful and wholly “other” and would have made the perfect end to the album.  

Instead, the aforementioned “The Death of Trees” follows for a necessarily anticlimactic conclusion, but I can’t fault the band for its placement: it was too good to leave off and it wouldn’t have fit anywhere else.  From start to finish, this is inarguably one of the most strange and visionary albums to emerge from 1980’s England—no small feat, given the competition. Shouting at the Ground is the sound of a band straining their ingenuity and creativity to the limit in hopes of forging something stunning and unique (and succeeding).

(Aside: While I was researching this album, I found an Italian language history of Zoviet France and unsuccessfully attempted to translate it using Babelfish.  “Album” translated as “egg white” and I learned that their sound is based primarily upon “monoropes.”)