Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: ZircuS
Label: ZARŠ Records
Release: 2012
Length: 45:10
Rating: 4/5
ZirkuS, the underground tribe from Slovenj Gradec, true sonic terrorists who shook the music universe awake two years ago with their studio debut »Epic Tribe« (2010), are back after just two years with its successor, »Away From The Safety Zone«. The title alone hints that this time around the band is taking even more creative freedom in fusing seemingly irreconcilable genre watersheds, stepping out of the safe haven of the »tried and tested« and heading into new dimensions of musical provocation.
With »Epic Tribe« the band undoubtedly flagged its potential. Though still a bit naively arranged in places, the album, on the flip side, came across as provocative and fresh thanks to its sheer peculiarity. It carried a pile of promising starting points the band could lean on effectively down the road while honing its musical identity, its own artistic one-off. And that’s exactly what happened.
»Away From The Safety Zone« is a successor that’s a whole step up from the debut »Epic Tribe«. The band managed to bring together nine tracks (the tenth is a remix of Symbiosis) that convincingly prove ZircuS have matured when it comes to merging their leading motif structures even more effectively and arranging the songs themselves. Every single track boasts a generous dose of dynamic theater in how things unfold, and a much higher level of listenability in the choice of catchy combinations of lead melodies, which are as a rule underpinned by the hypnosis of tribal, even »trance«-hybrid dance rhythms. And of course, a very important factor in all this is the upgraded production in the sound picture itself. That gives the building blocks of the individual tracks extra contrast, and the sonic spectrum of the picture built this way strikes an excellent middle ground between live, aggressive attack, which the band creates mainly through the eruptive responsiveness of the rhythmic foundation (they don’t even hold back on double bass pedals) driving the core of the songs, then the authoritative, alienated, extraterrestrial delivery of verses in the frosty tone of the lead vocal, and the combination of synth and guitar riff holding up the wall of accompaniment.
This time the band actually pulled off a few highly provocative moves, and every one of them landed. Luck favors the bold, after all. Unambiguous proof, one that neatly foreshadows how things unfold from the beginning of the album to the end, is its very opener True American, which melts the proverbially impossible into a thoroughly tasteful conglomerate of musical symbiosis. The howling delta blues approach of the »slide« guitar, which in some other story the Danish Volbeat would have used completely differently, quickly gets infected with programmed sampling! A move that’s literally shocking. Blues is a genre that tolerates experimentation, in the sense of integrating other genre forms, extremely badly. All it can take is genuine, raw originality, which is »blues« and nothing else. And yet ZircuS broke that rule this time and delivered the peak of the new album right out of the gate. Provocative in expression. True American, besides the lead delta blues slide-playing described above, serves up an excellent dose of lively color in its combined motifs. The track even carries a touch of unpredictable development, while the band keeps a clear compactness throughout. Splendidly woven in is the transitional part that kicks off after the 4-minute mark, which, in a melos of hypnosis, delivers a real mini blast into a post-punk-to-shoegaze mix, to which you add a bit of old-school Depeche Mode hairdo, before it flows back into the provocative fusion of blues and the tribal fire of programmed backing.
The track Fantasy, where the black riffs of the album opener give way to the light of festive »fanfare« keyboards, also released as the album’s introductory single, nicely lightens the load for the rest of the album. An additional rhythmic pattern deepens a feeling that Frankie Goes To Holywood could easily have used for their own vision back in the mid-eighties. A hugely welcome contrast, proving in artistic terms that the band really set itself no conceptual barriers this time. In Stanaic Bluies the »bullet echo« effect is masterfully delivered in a rhythmic loop, creating the track’s heavily gloomy, muffled mood in tandem with immersive vocal theater. In the middle the band once again masterfully relieves the bleak opening, which flows into a hypnotic techno continuation. Symbiosis already has the real character of trance music (which is deepened across the board in the remix version), Like A Lion takes a breath and puts the primitive, bestial aggression of tribal rhythms front and center, while in It’s All On The Surface the band dabbles in alternative hip-hop impulses. The tracks It Was Raininig and Gold In The Ground even carry a few shards of mild Depeche Mode and No Order synthpop cosmetics, which hugely pleasantly ease off the aggressive face of the events that spin on the album before them. Once again, sensual, splendid and highly tasteful arranging that, with such a wealth of sonic splendor, keeps the listener hooked with no trouble at all.
The upgraded expressive power of the vocal must also be highlighted. On the new album it sounds noticeably more confident, even more inventive in shaping the verse melodies, and so it binds far more effectively to the arrangement form of all nine tracks. The element of theatricality stands out too, meaning Aleš Gangl’s vocal is this time considerably more variable and willing to experiment. That’s why it comes across as even more convincing when he has to slip into the role of a preacher and effectively spotlight a particular mood. As already mentioned, though, the vocal is deliberately cold and alienated in the production, which is the purpose and the basic trick behind building the band’s expressive image, one that rests on the hypnosis of electronics fused with organic sound.
»Away From The Safety Zone« is a matured successor to the debut »Epic Tribe«. With the new album, ZircuS has defined the foundation of an expressively provocative face that deepens otherness. A hairdo of eclecticism, in other words.It’s a new chapter for the band, matured in production and sound, and it can also boast a hugely polished arrangement structure, an even higher measure of dynamics and fluid unfolding, convincingly accompanied at every step by the atmosphere of a genuinely hypnotic effect. The band has wittily merged several genre watersheds, even retro-sounding structures of eighties synthpop cosmetics, and served them up as an interesting, offbeat musical picture book. It answers with the unique look of an ID card for a self-grown stance of alternative musical character. In the future the band can keep deepening and expanding that at will, with no baggage. And that’s the principle of healthy musical creativity.
Line-up
Aleš Gangl – vocals, keyboards
Max Gregor – guitar, bass guitar, keyboards
Uroš Bračič – drums
Tomislav Gangl – video
Rok Bricman – guitar
Aleš Krevh – keyboards
Marko Štruc – drums, djembe
Production
Peter Penko & Zircus
Track list
1. True American
2. Fantasy
3. Satanic Blues
4. Safety Zone
5. It’s All On The Surface
6. Like A Lion
7. Symbiosis
8. It Was Raining
9. Gold In The Ground
10. Symbiosis (remiks)
