There is no colder moment ever than that when Assault On Precinct 13’s kid’s song warps icily into John Carpenter’s key line. Zombie Zombie have taken that moment and run with it, forming a band which moulds slasher stories and horror movies into slo-mo-disco-meets-krautrock jam epics. Less a side-project than a juvenile obsession, the duo formed around the studio spaces of Paris in the first half of this decade, fascinated equally by the horror films of Dario Argento as by their Goblin soundtracks.
“The music that soundtracks these films is so atmospheric. It is about creating a physical reaction as much as it is about the sounds themselves,” says the improbably titled drummer and soundsmith, Cosmic Neman, who makes the music with Etienne Jaumet, a free-jazz saxophonist, sound engineer and electronic handyman by day.
The pair’s rise has been pretty spectacular. Originally “something fun to do at parties”, they were snapped up by Parisian electro label Versatile after releasing an EP on Boomboomtchak.
Debut album A Land For Renegades was conceived as the soundtrack to an imaginary road movie about two mercenaries racing against the night, hounded by unseen forces. Apart from a rather daft track about a “nightclub where Iggy Pop and David Bowie’s ghosts are performing”, it’s a brilliant conception – while bits wouldn’t sound out of place on Italians Do It Better, it’s more soundstage than Studio 54. As well as John Carpenter and Goblin, there’s bits of Popul Vuh’s stuff for Herzog. There’s a definite shade of Suicide’s more cinematic moments in the mix – a band with whom they share an absolute will to fuck us up.
Then there’s the impressive commitment to misinformation and myth-making: rumours of unnatural phenomena (walls have reportedly bled and strange marks have appeared on people’s bodies at their gig) are neither confirmed nor denied.
'A Land For Renegades' can be got in Plugd Records.
www.myspace.com/therealzombiezombie
www.myspace.com/pingpongcork
www.myspace.com/versatilerecords
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