OSIRIS

After Yochk'o "Jeff" Seffer (saxophone, clarinet) and François "Faton" Cahen (pianos) decided to leave Magma after the first couple of albums unsatisfied with where Christian Vander was steering the band into a new musical genre called zeuhl, the two formed ZAO as the first Magma offshoot and released five albums throughout the 1970s which while retaining the zeuhl characteristics of its parent band in the beginning, slowly but surely whittled away the Magma influences until it became a standard jazz fusion band a few albums later.

The band released its debut on Richard Pinha's startup Disjuncta label in 1973 and delivered a mix of Magma influenced zeuhl with a lighter breezier blend of jazz fusion more like The Weather Report. The band followed with its second album OSIRIS which surprisingly sold well but ended up out of print soon enough due to the Disjuncta label quickly going out of business. Between the debut release "Z=7L" and OSIRIS, there was a substantial lineup change, a trait that would dominate the band's existence throughout the 1970s. At this stage vocalist Mauricia Platon left the band and was not replaced by another vocalist but rather the vocal duties were picked up by Seffer and bassist Joel "DUD" Dugrenot.

While the rest of the band remained stable the addition of two extra percussionists added a bit more variation in the drumming department. Despite the changes, the second album sort of continues where the debut left off with a lighter delivery of jazz fusion mixed with occasional zeuhl elements most notably in the bass grooves, percussive hypnotism and occasional vocals reminiscing the days of Magma's earliest albums however the band was far from as adventurous or outrageous as the first two Magma albums and rather played it safe with an easier listening watered down version often sounding more like some of Soft Machines post "Third" releases rather than anything out of the zeuhl playbook.

While the bubbling bass thumping maintains a zeuhl flavor to the mix, the incessant saxophone solos and busy tribal drumming take this into a world of its own making which unfortunately doesn't come off nearly as original as what Magma was cranking out at the same time or even what the band presented on its debut album. With five tracks that feature two lengthy eight minute plus extravaganzas, the emphasis is on jazz improvisations rather than the hypnotic zeuhl effect that features vocal workouts and repetitive variations. The album comes off as a bit uneven because it can't decide if it wants to retain its zeuhl inspired origins or completely abandon them altogether for a dip into the English Canterbury Scene.

ZAO was never known as one of the exciting bands to fall off the Magma tree and although i found the debut had an interesting charm in how it was the first band to reinvent the world of zeuhl into something that would catch on with other acts to follow, this second offering that was the first to slowly shed the zeuhl influences and steer the band into a completely zeuhl-free form of jazz fusion just isn't as interesting and in many ways sounds rather generic when compared to other similar fusion bands that were around at the same time. A nice pleasant listening experience for sure but in the end not something that beckons return visits and considering it still features just enough zeuhl characteristics to squeak into that category, sounds a bit disappointing if you're expecting a greater emphasis on those attributes.