Ze a rita review11/28/2023 This dazzling sound was in part the work of Detroit disco king and remixer Ken Collier, and these tracks weren’t far off house music in form, years before the fact. These alarmist techniques, from ‘Tell Me That I’m Dreaming’s surrealist dissection of the American dream to ‘Wheel Me Out’s litany of Martian-voiced anxieties, up the dancefloor energy to the point of delirium. Don Was has described his band as “prankster artificiers who try always to put the glitch in.” And sure enough, the subject matter, pioneering sampler abuse and Parliament/Funkadelic-inspired use of manipulated voices to represent jabbering, competing parts of the psyche lend their muscular disco a demented air. They were Detroit through and through, both in their cross-genre sound (R&B, rock and jazz were always common currency there) and in the simple fact that they played hard. Was (Not Was) formed a sort of satellite ZE settlement. But not really - I believed that was what we should be making.” The extended version included on ZE 30 sounds somehow twice as devastating as the edit. Zilkha says now: “It was a cynical, manufactured record. Cue heavy electro-funk and rock guitar (a harder, crisper version of the sound Talking Heads would use on Speaking In Tongues three years later) and Nona Hendryx belting out lyrics based on George Jackson’s prison letters. Perhaps Material’s finest moment, ‘Bustin’ Out’ came about when Zilkha asked Bill Laswell for a disco beat, and to be “as strange as like” on top. Chuck in the ZE Christmas Album and you’ll hear just what all the fuss was about.īut for now, our Spotify mix and artist guide (below) will give you a scorching introduction to ZE’s world of mutant disco. However, Mutant Disco: A Subtle Discolation Of The Norm - the three-volume compilation Esteban pulled together on reactivating the label in 2003 - remains the best telling of the ZE story (as does its companion comp N.Y. It’s a suitably eccentric assortment of ZE’s finest and weirdest moments, ranging from mutant disco highlights to curios like the bold, if dated, attempts at electrified Gene Vincent-style rock 'n' roll from Alan Vega and Marie Et Les Garçons (you may catch a whiff of Sigue Sigue Sputnik or even Ariel Pink from their itchy performances). The ‘E’ half of the ZE board, Parisian magazine editor and designer Michel Esteban, apparently provided the impeccable taste and knack for subversion.Īll this can be heard across the selections on Strut’s new ZE 30 compilation. This inherited financial leeway allowed them to, say, give the then-maligned Suicide $10,000 for equipment and send them to the prestigious Power Station studio to record a second album. Simple, that is, when you have the Mothercare millions behind you, as Michael Zilkha - the ‘Z’ in ZE - did. 3) Wrap the outcome up in boldly designed covers based on the NYC checker cab. 2) Invite it into a decent studio to work with great musicians and producers (in-house producer Bob Blank had worked with everyone from Chic to Sun Ra, and drafted in the best session players). 1) Spot something bristling in the art spaces, discos or toilet venues of stagflation-era New York’s Lower East Side. This was true mutant disco, not A Certain Ratio dressing funk in glum shorts.Ī simple process bought about these wild results. ZE's location and cashflow also meant - unlike its UK counterparts - it had access to disco’s finest musicians on its doorstep, prepared to play alongside newcomers and amateurs on well-planned wrecking missions. Following the punk and disco booms, its currency was good, but the industry was still open enough for inspired renegades to turn the form inside out to make the reality question the dream and vice versa. But artists from each swarmed through the other’s highly conceptual, hooky-as-hell projects, with giddying results.įor the non-No Wave side of things, label-founder Michael Zilkha advocated a Roxy Music-style approach to the post punk era: "I wanted the records to make it clear what was happening, to be very pop and bright - but Pop Art, not pop music pop." And at its best, ZE represents a peak in pop's self-awareness. Its output divided more or less into two camps - the cerebral but visceral No Wave scene in one, the art-pop and disco schemers in the other. Each release hinted at a whole new way for pop to be, many of which have been taken up since (not least in the punk-disco, wonky pop and even minimal house of our own decade). Always surprising and frequently great, ZE Records was a uniquely mercurial label.
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