zanzibar snails communique
hmmm...might have to trek up to denton again later this month, especially since they're playing with yells at eels:
Improbably, Denton/DFW experimentalists Zanzibar Snails have penetrated the European avant-garde market, garnering a generous little blurb from the esteemed Byron Coley in the Size Matters column in the June 2008 issue of The Wire.
Zanzibar Snails Krakkatowiak MAYYRH 3” CD
From Denton, the past home of Texas’s space rock programme, The Zanzibar Snails have emerged as one of the region’s more interesting units over the past couple of years. They appear as a quartet here, using feedback, sax, electronics and percussion to create an extremely neat kind of racket. The feel is akin to The Dead C jamming with Paul Flaherty, and you’d have to agree, that’s a good goddamn feel. - Byron Coley, THE WIRE
Zanzibar has two Denton shows slated for July, the first being a July 19 show at Hailey’s with Austin’s My Education, touring behind their new release Bad Vibrations on powerhouse psyche label Strange Attractors Audio House, joined on the bill by newest Silber Records signees, the nomadic hotel, hotel.
The second Zanzibar show is a July 22 jaunt at Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios opening for legendary art-metallers Harvey Milk, touring behind a new release on Hydrahead and a renewed interest in their outsider brand of unpredictable slo-mo sludge, giving way to gossamer art-balladry, off-kilter tribalism, and/or filthy Sunn 0))-like doom rumblings at the drop of a hat. Also on this bill is Dallas avant-jazz powerhouse Yells at Eels, featuring Dennis, Aaron and Stefan Gonzalez, as well as wiry Denton rockists Kaboom.
Zanzibar Snails in July
July 19@Hailey’s, Denton w/ My Education + hotel, hotel + My Empty Phantom $6 / $8
July 22@Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios, Denton, w/ Harvey Milk + Yells at Eels + Kaboom!
$6 / $8
Zanzibar’s current releases include not only KRAKKATOWIAK but also the BROWN DWARF full-length CDr on MAYYRH Records.
Coming later this summer is Vanadium Dream, a full-length CDr on L.A. CDr label Phantom Limb Recordings, featuring both some of Zanzibar’s most understated music ever, and some of Nevada Hill’s most ambitious packaging ever.
www.mayyrh.com
mayyrh.blogspot.com/
www.myspace.com/zanzibarsnails
OTHER RECENT ZANZIBAR PRESS
THE SOUND PROJECTOR
Zanzibar Snails, noted in issue 16, are back again with a new CD in a hand-made screenprinted digipack. The delirious Brown Dwarf (MAYYRH RECORDS MYH05) features this Texan improvising collective as a four-piece incarnation, including Michael Chamy who works with live electronics and tape loops and also produced the record. Effectively one long piece divided for ease of handling into five named suites, Brown Dwarf delivers a mightily twisted and incredibly dense lump of sonic dough. Given the slightly suffocating atmosphere they brew, it's impressive how some of the key instruments – the sharply-angsted viola of Josh McWhirter for example – manage to float to the surface of this rolling planet of rich electro-acoustic swampery. The Snails' electric guitarist Nevada Hill also appears on the 3-incher D&N (MYH03) with David Lee Price, to forge a collection of eight introspective guitar-scapes that gradually suck you into mesmerising fields of ambiguity. Which isn't a bad
psychological sensation for this time of year, but if you want something guaranteed to make you feel decidedly ill (in a good way, I must stress), then it's the Snails CD for you.
DALLAS OBSERVER
"Experimental" is a frequently misapplied term when it comes to music. But when it comes to Zanzibar Snails—the brainchild of former Dallas Observer freelancer Michael Chamy on shortwave, oscillators and generators and guitarist Nevada Hill—there's hardly a more fitting word. Their performances are improvised, combining elements as earthy and familiar as viola and acoustic guitar with otherworldly sounds like screeching electronics and disembodied voices picked up on a shortwave.
Brown Dwarf is a live recording of a performance at Hailey's in Denton, although you'd never know it, as there's absolutely no crowd noise as Chamy and Hill are aided by Seth Sherman on acoustic guitar and Josh McWhirter on viola and tapes. It's a single composition of tuneless viola, short-wave transmissions, buzzing electronics and a single guitar chord hypnotically strummed for what seems like forever.
It drones on for 34 minutes, divided into five tracks. Ambient soundscapes consisting solely of white noise and the occasional guitar note stretch on for minutes at a time. But just as you get comfortable, the calm is broken by a jarring outburst of distressed electronics or frantic viola abuse. Alternately distressing and soothing, Brown Dwarf is an immersive and perversely enjoyable experience. – Jesse Hughey
DEAD ANGEL
Zanzibar Snails -- BROWN DWARF [Mayyrh Records]
Denton, TX sure is a hotbed of psych-lovin' weirdness; Zanzibar Snails are the latest to drink the tainted water and start hallucinating. Recorded live in October, 2007, the five tracks here are all merely divisions in one long performance (approximately 35 minutes) featuring Josh McWhirler on viola and tapes, Michael Chamy on shortwave, loops, and generators, Seth Sherman (ex-Early Lines) on acoustic guitar, and Nevada Hill on electric guitar. Essentially ambient music peppered with a growing plethora of disembodied voices, strange electronic frippery, and other near-random effluvia, the disc starts off with low-key humming and droning and gradually -- so slowly that by the time you realize something new is happening, it dawns on you that it's been happening for a while now -- the ambient fog fills up with repetitive, dreamlike noises like sleepy voices chanting vague nonsense over and over, along with peculiar sounds and steady but minimal guitar strumming that after a
while hardly even sounds like guitar anymore, and the infusion of sounds continues, with the sonic landscape growing steadily more dense and cluttered while somehow remaining light and airy sounding. The increasinly loud guitar clang does move the piece out of ambient territory after a while, along with the avalanche of sounds, but then everything but the guitars and a background hum dies away, and toward the end the sound is dominated mainly by low-level amp hum, plunking acoustic guitar, and incredibly slow guitar strumming. Eventually viola and other noises (shortwave, perhaps?) rise up as well, and the density of sound builds up again, but the sound never grows as quite as powerfully dense or wildly agitated as before, until the disc finally fades out in a whirl of audio chatter. Mesmerizing in a strange and alien way, like listening to hippies in the park after drinking acid-spiked punch. Bonus points for the cool handmade digipack sleeve in the cool earth-tone colors.
Improbably, Denton/DFW experimentalists Zanzibar Snails have penetrated the European avant-garde market, garnering a generous little blurb from the esteemed Byron Coley in the Size Matters column in the June 2008 issue of The Wire.
Zanzibar Snails Krakkatowiak MAYYRH 3” CD
From Denton, the past home of Texas’s space rock programme, The Zanzibar Snails have emerged as one of the region’s more interesting units over the past couple of years. They appear as a quartet here, using feedback, sax, electronics and percussion to create an extremely neat kind of racket. The feel is akin to The Dead C jamming with Paul Flaherty, and you’d have to agree, that’s a good goddamn feel. - Byron Coley, THE WIRE
Zanzibar has two Denton shows slated for July, the first being a July 19 show at Hailey’s with Austin’s My Education, touring behind their new release Bad Vibrations on powerhouse psyche label Strange Attractors Audio House, joined on the bill by newest Silber Records signees, the nomadic hotel, hotel.
The second Zanzibar show is a July 22 jaunt at Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios opening for legendary art-metallers Harvey Milk, touring behind a new release on Hydrahead and a renewed interest in their outsider brand of unpredictable slo-mo sludge, giving way to gossamer art-balladry, off-kilter tribalism, and/or filthy Sunn 0))-like doom rumblings at the drop of a hat. Also on this bill is Dallas avant-jazz powerhouse Yells at Eels, featuring Dennis, Aaron and Stefan Gonzalez, as well as wiry Denton rockists Kaboom.
Zanzibar Snails in July
July 19@Hailey’s, Denton w/ My Education + hotel, hotel + My Empty Phantom $6 / $8
July 22@Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios, Denton, w/ Harvey Milk + Yells at Eels + Kaboom!
$6 / $8
Zanzibar’s current releases include not only KRAKKATOWIAK but also the BROWN DWARF full-length CDr on MAYYRH Records.
Coming later this summer is Vanadium Dream, a full-length CDr on L.A. CDr label Phantom Limb Recordings, featuring both some of Zanzibar’s most understated music ever, and some of Nevada Hill’s most ambitious packaging ever.
www.mayyrh.com
mayyrh.blogspot.com/
www.myspace.com/zanzibarsnails
OTHER RECENT ZANZIBAR PRESS
THE SOUND PROJECTOR
Zanzibar Snails, noted in issue 16, are back again with a new CD in a hand-made screenprinted digipack. The delirious Brown Dwarf (MAYYRH RECORDS MYH05) features this Texan improvising collective as a four-piece incarnation, including Michael Chamy who works with live electronics and tape loops and also produced the record. Effectively one long piece divided for ease of handling into five named suites, Brown Dwarf delivers a mightily twisted and incredibly dense lump of sonic dough. Given the slightly suffocating atmosphere they brew, it's impressive how some of the key instruments – the sharply-angsted viola of Josh McWhirter for example – manage to float to the surface of this rolling planet of rich electro-acoustic swampery. The Snails' electric guitarist Nevada Hill also appears on the 3-incher D&N (MYH03) with David Lee Price, to forge a collection of eight introspective guitar-scapes that gradually suck you into mesmerising fields of ambiguity. Which isn't a bad
psychological sensation for this time of year, but if you want something guaranteed to make you feel decidedly ill (in a good way, I must stress), then it's the Snails CD for you.
DALLAS OBSERVER
"Experimental" is a frequently misapplied term when it comes to music. But when it comes to Zanzibar Snails—the brainchild of former Dallas Observer freelancer Michael Chamy on shortwave, oscillators and generators and guitarist Nevada Hill—there's hardly a more fitting word. Their performances are improvised, combining elements as earthy and familiar as viola and acoustic guitar with otherworldly sounds like screeching electronics and disembodied voices picked up on a shortwave.
Brown Dwarf is a live recording of a performance at Hailey's in Denton, although you'd never know it, as there's absolutely no crowd noise as Chamy and Hill are aided by Seth Sherman on acoustic guitar and Josh McWhirter on viola and tapes. It's a single composition of tuneless viola, short-wave transmissions, buzzing electronics and a single guitar chord hypnotically strummed for what seems like forever.
It drones on for 34 minutes, divided into five tracks. Ambient soundscapes consisting solely of white noise and the occasional guitar note stretch on for minutes at a time. But just as you get comfortable, the calm is broken by a jarring outburst of distressed electronics or frantic viola abuse. Alternately distressing and soothing, Brown Dwarf is an immersive and perversely enjoyable experience. – Jesse Hughey
DEAD ANGEL
Zanzibar Snails -- BROWN DWARF [Mayyrh Records]
Denton, TX sure is a hotbed of psych-lovin' weirdness; Zanzibar Snails are the latest to drink the tainted water and start hallucinating. Recorded live in October, 2007, the five tracks here are all merely divisions in one long performance (approximately 35 minutes) featuring Josh McWhirler on viola and tapes, Michael Chamy on shortwave, loops, and generators, Seth Sherman (ex-Early Lines) on acoustic guitar, and Nevada Hill on electric guitar. Essentially ambient music peppered with a growing plethora of disembodied voices, strange electronic frippery, and other near-random effluvia, the disc starts off with low-key humming and droning and gradually -- so slowly that by the time you realize something new is happening, it dawns on you that it's been happening for a while now -- the ambient fog fills up with repetitive, dreamlike noises like sleepy voices chanting vague nonsense over and over, along with peculiar sounds and steady but minimal guitar strumming that after a
while hardly even sounds like guitar anymore, and the infusion of sounds continues, with the sonic landscape growing steadily more dense and cluttered while somehow remaining light and airy sounding. The increasinly loud guitar clang does move the piece out of ambient territory after a while, along with the avalanche of sounds, but then everything but the guitars and a background hum dies away, and toward the end the sound is dominated mainly by low-level amp hum, plunking acoustic guitar, and incredibly slow guitar strumming. Eventually viola and other noises (shortwave, perhaps?) rise up as well, and the density of sound builds up again, but the sound never grows as quite as powerfully dense or wildly agitated as before, until the disc finally fades out in a whirl of audio chatter. Mesmerizing in a strange and alien way, like listening to hippies in the park after drinking acid-spiked punch. Bonus points for the cool handmade digipack sleeve in the cool earth-tone colors.
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