ZONE SIX

Deep, dark, swirling freeform spacerock, Germany's Zone Six are a band without restrictions or boundaries. Totally improvised, their debut album is a mix of plodding and uneasy psychedelic noise bound to fascinate and terrify. Sounding like one long continuous bad trip through space, it constantly crashing down on top of you with maddening bass, liquid synth, dirty distorted squalling electric guitar and driving percussion. Jodi Barry's ethereal voice and tortured words convey a real sense of paranoia and confusion, and while the seductively meandering music is sometimes very floating and dreamy, it's more like an unpleasant nightmare, as the band has a superb grasp on delivering building tension and controlled fear.

Australian vocalist Jodi Barry comes across like a harder version of Beth Gibbons from Portishead, her voice sounding so lost and other-wordly one minute, often struggling to be heard above the feedback and distorted noise, and commanding and threatening the next. On tracks like `Barbwired Box' she really spits out her words, conveying genuine terror. She's sensual and beckoning on the reggae tinged `Dream Eyeland', sorrowful and pained on `Her Smell Hasn't Left Me', and because Barry also improvised the lyrics, they often come across as rambling stream-of-consciousness fragments.

`Barbwired Box' is menacing and heavy-going, with a very dark surreal lyric driven home by the pounding drums, and it also has a sinister mellotron outro with a vacuum of acid drenched guitar and keyboards swirling all around. `Empty Spaces' has a foreboding climbing bass line swamped in grumbling distortion. Bass player Dave `Sula Bassana' Schmidt really shines on this one, and Claus Bühler's drums are a perfect example of effective restraint and rising drama, and guitarist Hans-Peter tears through the track with a wall of feedback. Nine-minute standout `Three Elements' coasts through a range of sounds, beginning with a frantic spoken word piece by Barry, then purred vocals before an `Ummagumma'-era Floyd-esque psychedelic middle and finally morphing into a reggae space-out not far from the Ozric Tentacles.

Tracks like `Vacuum' and `Bubble Trouble' are essentially looped electronic experiments, while the three `Mindtrap' parts are walls of feedback and bridging snippets of sound. `Dream Eyeland' is a sprightly reggae-tinged piece filled with loopy electronics with a sensual vocal by Barry, but the music overall remains mysterious and spaced out. H.P's howling guitar licks kill on this one, and there's some bouncy bass and drumwork too. `Her Smell...' has almost middle-eastern motifs throughout, very hypnotic, with a wonderful acid drenched messy guitar solo, and a Gong-like section near the end is quite jarring, actually sounding kind of...malevolent! The Gong influence will surface again at the tail end of the album with the insane ditty `Oh Mary', which helps to lighten the mood after quite a lot of gloom and heavy moodiness!

The album ends on a rather reflective and somber piano/vocal piece sung hauntingly by Barry. It sounds like nothing else on the album, but the band clearly knew it was special when they heard it. Strangely enough, it's oddly uplifting and comforting, and her whispered lyric "I can still feel your shadow..." fills this beautiful piece with vivid imagery and stark emotion.

The sparse production on the album really lets the music breathe, never sounding messy or cluttered, and extra special mention must also go to the face-melting acid-drenched album cover painted by Franz Landel - good chance your mind might resemble it once you've listened to the album a few times! `Zone Six' is very emotionally draining and unnerving, really puts you through the ringer, but it's doubtful the band would have it any other way! Some of the music is a little tedious from time to time, and it's frequently all over the place, but it's always adventurous, fascinating, daring, captivating, groovy and highly original. Very recommended if you can find it!

Four stars.

I found this a little confusing but there are two versions of ZONE SIX's self titled debut. There's the one listed on the site here at 59 minutes and thirteen tracks with female vocals, mellotron and keyboards besides the guitar, drums, synths and bass. And then there's the one I have that is called in the liner notes "the very first session of ZONE SIX" and is missing the female vocals, mellotron and keyboards. It's also two long tracks only at 27 minutes and 24 1/2 minutes respectively.This was released originally on cassette and in limited quantities in 1997 and called the original instrumental version while the other version was released on cd in 1998 and both have the same cover art.

Dave Schmidt aka Sula Bassana plays bass and the synths credited are from him but added later in the studio much like the female vocals, keys and mellotron were added even further down the road on the 1998 edition. The music like on all ZONE SIX recordings are improvs and this was done over one night in Berlin, Germany in August of 1997. Schmidt recorded, mixed and produced it.

Bottom line is that I like this record but wish had a little more in the way of contrasts and outbursts. My two favourite recordings by this band are the live one "Live Wired 2004" and also "The Split Thing" that they did with Russian space rockers VESPERO. There's a lot of relaxed and laid back music on here surprisingly for their very first session together. Maybe nobody wanted to show off, you know first impressions and all. The bass just isn't that noticeable so it's the beats and guitar plus the added electronics which do help create atmosphere and mood.

There's a brief space transmission to start the opener that was added later, the same with the start of the second track as we get these processed voices. A reggae groove kicks in that lasts about seven minutes and I'm just not into it but the bass at least stands out, we get that reggae vibe as well late on the first track. There's an eastern vibe with that guitar and it echoes later. The sound 15 minutes in might be my favourite on this record. Voices follow briefly then a calm.

I don't want to give the impression that this recording is samey because they do change the flavour often but usually in a subtle way but one section doesn't usually overstay it's welcome. I like this overall but the band gets better in my opinion at this improv stuff. Nice way to start their journey though.