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Zombi - Escape Velocity

Rating

RIYL

Kraftwerk
Goblin
Titan
Gianni Rossi

Release Date

05/10/2011

Label

Relapse

Tracklist

1. Escape Velocity
2. Slow Oscillations
3. Shrunken Heads
4. DE3
5. Time of Troubles

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Recent Ratings
homemadebullshit	ryanetter
Mike Duchnowsky

I suppose it’s not really “progressive rock” if it’s got both eyes firmly looking to the past, but quibbling over how we’re going to categorize Zombi is not really the pertinent issue here. What is is that regardless of time period, from the 1970s moog heyday to now, Zombi should be considered among the best the prog rock genre has ever put forth. A bold claim to be sure, but now four full-lengths into their career, it’s well-earned; even with respect to EPs and splits, formats where certain bands see fit to let down somewhat, there is no true weak link in the Zombi chain. Even more impressive is that despite the fact that this band is purely retro in the way they mine the past for inspiration, in no way do their albums feel at all expected.

It’s been interesting to watch how Zombi’s career has unfolded. Whereas Cosmos was deeply rooted in the space-rock tradition, and Surface To Air was more Dario Argento and John Carpenter, Spirit Animal and now Escape Velocity have found the duo somewhat migrating toward Autobahn territory, trading in (though not completely) molding corpses and Karlheinz Stockhausen for his German offspring like Kraftwerk. Escape Velocity stands at a very interesting intersection between where the band has come from, and where its sights are set.

When the title track opens with an isolated synth passage that feels as if Zombi is going to comfortably slide back into the more ethereal Cosmos realm, this sentiment is altered irrevocably when drums that would get the Brothers Butabi’s heads nodding kicks in. The rest of the track is a push-and-pull between the extraterrestrialism of early Zombi and their newfound kraut-rock influences. The song ends abruptly, and the introduction of “Slow Oscillations” reminds us why the fact that Giorgio Moroder produced this album is not incidental, as his fingerprints are felt clearly throughout the song. “Shrunken Heads” amplifies Moroder’s touches with trance-like reverberations floating over a Kraftwerk foundation.

“DE3” is birthed out of the slow fade-out of “Shrunken Heads,” and it possesses the greatest quotient of dance-floor pulse yet, though traces of the star-gazing quality of Cosmos and the dark underpinning of Surface To Air hang around on the periphery of the song like wallflowers. Escape Velocity concludes with “Time of Troubles,” which sits somewhere between Conrad Schnitzler and Can.

The reason this doesn’t score higher, and this is a criticism I had of Spirit Animal as well, was that the proceedings sometimes feel a bit directionless, and an otherwise strong song like “Time of Troubles” feels anti-climactic because it is not suited to close out the album. There’s a ton of interesting things going on, and as such Escape Velocity is far from disappointing, but I do think it is lacking somewhat in coherence. My personal favorite Zombi record remains Surface To Air in all facets of a listening experience, but I applaud Zombi’s back-to-the-future approach for keeping things interesting. It's not their best, but it is still damn good—as I said, there is no true weak link in the Zombi chain.

--Jacob Oliver