Zoviet*france – Shouting at the Ground (1990)
Let us say it again, all art is in its origin essentially symbolical and ritual, and only through a late degeneration, indeed a very recent degeneration, has it lost its sacred character so as to become at last the purely profane ‘recreation’ to which it has been reduced among our contemporaries.
René Guénon
The dark drone of Zoviet*france is best spoken about as a whisper. A musical collective that takes their status as obscure extremely serious, challenging our concepts of sound, noise and music in the deepest and most fundamental ways and redefining those definitions at the core. The dark ambience of the music peppered with disjointed rhythms and deep passages that only reveal themselves under the duress of repetitious, tribal beats.
On Shouting at the Ground, the listener is challenged into embracing a radical, expansive lexicon of music which celebrates the more primitive and outer aspects of the avant-garde movement and beyond. The music here functioning in an atmosphere that is intentionally tense, dark and disturbing at one moment, only to shift into pleasant, even erotic and sexual a moment later. Using electronics, tribal-drone and swiping sound scapes, the Zoviet’s create an organic sound and living environment.
Zoviet*france set the standard for this sound beginning in 1982 with the cassette tapes of their first two albums, Hessian (1982) and Garista (1982), creating extreme, industrial, dark ambience that was both highly complex and naïve in its spirit of exploration, similar to the spirt of creativity we all had as children. We explored sound as children by creating abstract noise that helped us find our adult voice(s). And as we became more conventional in terms of communication (some would say “sophisticated”), we left behind the importance of that discovery. Not only did we forget the pleasures of that exploration and expression, but limited ourselves with the rules of conformity.
Our notions of disposable entertainment have replaced the important function and spiritual connections that had been so vital to human development and satisfaction. We are cut off from our cosmic communication with gods and prophets and have exchanged a complex and transcendental dialogue for the artificial; the loss bubbling over in dissatisfaction all around us. On Shouting, the Zoviet’s music acts as a huge counterpoint. A giant magnet of molten iron and oar swirling across our modern perceptions of the role which music plays.
Just this warning: the earthly drones found within this album can be genuinely unsettling, taking us back to a time before the compromises of modern civilization and its lukewarm values. This volatile mix of the primitive and the spiritual can awaken something buried within us, forcing us to confront whatever lays under the thin and shallow veil of superficiality we mask ourselves with. The result will leave you full and wanting more.
by Shawn Ciavattone