DECAYCAST Reviews: ZSA ZSA GABOR “Left Skull Bank” Cassette (Stay Strange, 2017)

DECAYCAST Reviews: ZSA ZSA GABOR “Left Skull Bank” Cassette (Stay Strange, 2017)

“ZSA ZSA GABOR is dead” but the  sounds, voice, and pulses in a ritual are anything and everything but that. ZSA ZSA GABOR is one of the artists and founders of the Stay Strange SD Crew who boast a new label imprint, show collective and all creative force led by San Diego stalwart Sam Lopez aided in sound and  words from Ariel Irbe, Esteban Flores and Micheal Zimmerman, allwith their  own projects to boot under the  collective umbrella. Irbe performs and records  under the  S O L V  moniker, while Flores work as  Monochromacy represents  powerful, thick, radicalized  guitar  forward drone/noise works.  

“Left Skull Bank I” opens up the cassette after a brief intro with a dark, smudged, thick drone which slowly encapsulates the listener and then drops them in a voice cell of terror, confusion, disorientation, The time to talk isn’t now or maybe again for an hour  or even a year. Seal your lips shut for it’s  time for the  hymn of ZSA ZSA GABOR. This release is relentlessly and refreshingly diverse in its sonic character and nuance of sound and style; oscillation between spoken texts , drone, ambient, field recordings, distant screams that  ring like a hammer  smashing an ancient bell,  and  string based  swells ZZG has something for everyone , but at the sane time NOTHING FOR YOU. They owe you nothing and owe  everything to the void. Full tilt  sonic mayhem engulfs your  last thought and hope as your skull is  cast aside like an extra, misshaped, unneeded brick into the  ever-growing pile of death.

“Left Skull Bank 2” picks up close to  where part 1 left off, with a thick, buzzing,  shaking vibrato of  stringed chaos while a monotone, anxious, realistic voice reads and  breathes upon every swelling  stringed drone of death, and after a “brief  demonic interlude” the listener is  cast once again into the  chaotic experiments of death with Part three, twisting and  tangling the  false hope that we once had  with harsh stabs, angry, dissonant, atonal swells through a purgatory nobody wants to  even pass by for a minute. This  cassette runs the  full scope of experimental sounds but in a a unique and refreshing way, no rehashing, no redux, this is simply top notch experimental music,  get about it, be about it. .ZSA ZSA  GABOR  is a thick, swollen, controlled  anger, which is more or less the  sound of  a  decaying  future; you’re dead long after you  found out when you’re  going  to die, and if you’re worthy this  might make an appearance at the funeral to help shovel your lifeless  corpse to  rest eternally and be consumed by the  wormed earth. Follow  ZSA ZSA GABOR HERE and HERE.