Zu, here, are the collection of shifting musicians that revolve around a core of Italians Massimo Pupillo and Luca Mai. The 93 is the representation of the ever intangible David Tibet. Together this is their collaboration. It also comes to something when the PR sheet leaves you wondering what else the review can say. I mean how many can quote Thomas Ligotti?
To set off on the path, though, this is a subtle and mostly soft affair. Soft in sound but not exactly gentle. Guitars are mostly acoustic with the occasional blossoming of darker, harsher sounds that clash and cry as though from behind some thick velvet curtain. Strings are often grating, discordant, sometimes gentle but they rise, twist and fall in perfect time to the jerks and turns in the emotions of Tibet’s voice. Electronics bolster or provide cushioning to the atmosphere. And always the voice, breathing the world into being.
In some ways this is a more focused affair than the stunning Hypnopazuzu album of last year, or perhaps monomaniacal. Or perhaps that too is wrong and it is simply this gives the impression of a sense of linear travel more pronounced. Yes if you find this line of thought pretentious then you have your choices; relax and find where it can take you or keep stumbling towards your own exit. If it is still there.
As ever the lyrics, the poetry of Tibet are the rudder for this ship and the music the sails. His seeming cut up technique which in fact is nothing of the sort has recurring themes here, a Mandela even that evades interpretation the harder you state at it. The only way in is to let it so what it wants, to cease resisting the unique vibrations and seeing what they create within you. It may not be what Zu93 see but it will be your truth nonetheless. It has the feeling of a lullaby as the apocalypse sweeps above. It truly has the same intangible but only just out of reach solidity as Chambers’ The King In Yellow and the impossible play, the Pallid Mask and some of the darker dreams of Ligotti, or his dreamer who dreams our reality. The Mirror Emperor comes, perhaps through dreams and by the time you awake it is too late and the dream has ended the world. Yes to me this is a far darker and more apocalyptic working than ‘Create Christ, Sailor Boy’, but ask me why, to give examples, I can only say that is what it leaves me with. It may not be what the Deloitte intended but it is what it has created.
This is a moment of synchronicity for me. A project that has enslaved me for years bubbles tantalizingly close to the solidity of words, but keeps sliding away and yet trying to ignore the frustration of it never quite being I distract myself with a game, Bloodborne. This instead appears to dance around the mythology of the project and offers a hitherto unseen path towards it. Then this, Zu93’s ‘Mirror Emperor’ somehow provides the resonant frequency to it all. Things change. Intangibles solidify. Everything reflected back at me but different, along a curious axis.
Too mystical for you? Too esoteric? Emperor’s New clothes? My mumbo jumbo clap trap self agrandising? Then listen to this yourself and see what this seamless blending of music, word, voice and intent does or does not do for your, to you.
Hey, was that the apocalypse
(9.5/10 Gizmo)
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