Zs - New Slaves

Zs
New Slaves
(2010, Social Registry)
RIYL = Aufgehoben, Kingdom Shore, Steve Reich

Zs is a unit of irregulars trained for piloting costumes of beastliness. New Slaves, their grand opera. It is the documentation of three costumings, mechanized, and of particular weight, with various sub-beastly machinery in tow. Part 1: “Concert Black” to “Masonry” – the first five installments find the troupes operating a web of interconnected brutes, partly organic, partly motorized, five dirge missives, jaws agape, wide shoulders and variously noisy purrs. This is the infantry. A list of monstrousness. Tattered with ballistics gone awry, but still functional, with a limp. “Acres of Skin” is perhaps the lead puppet in this procession, trailing bones of all the animals of Noah. Propelled, percussive. Part one is the initial assault to crumble the walls, the larger buildings, to set metal into the dirt and rearrange the livestock. Part 2: “New Slaves” – a single animal. Twenty minutes in length and height and width. The toil of Zs. Perhaps taller and lengthier than its timeframe. The engine. “New Slaves” is a series of multilateral parts pumping in conjunction, the bulldoze, correcting and reassembling part 1. Smoke is high in the air now, seen from miles. “New Slaves” is that new grind. Count the number of arms, the number of legs, tracks of tanks. An evolutionary force, part 2 is the flex and return, the new homemaking of charred marrow and bits of yellowed grass. Perhaps increasingly mechanized, but a distortion of mechanics. A perfunctory loop of mock celebrations and their loud wrist watches. The certain death and the certain intelligence of a cricked neck. Part 3: “Black Crow Ceremony,” parts one and two – the aftermath. These costumes tend more towards linens and ropes, lettuce, twigs, all in gallons of gasoline. Twin burnouts for the ghostly set, a mix of specters and the dismembered arms part 2. A milky ambience for the regiment of red-eyed drunkenness. Loosens the blood, though not without the fleshy mandibles and teeth of goats. Minotaurs circle these creatures warily. Two sentinel the after-Zs. Prepared by the shifts in the air. Part 3 is the shifts in the air that lift from the chaos. Collect your things. It’s time to go. The imperfect triptych, an immaculate corpse of sorts. Though not remotely similar to anything else you’ll hear this year, New Slaves is among the very best that sound has to offer this year, this new decade, this past century? The most concentrated aural workout I’ve had since, since…

-Thistle

Zs - "Acres of Skin"

Careful about motion sickness for this one: