By: Michael Madavi
Artist: Zenlo
Title: Skelethal Antics
Label: Porter Records
Genre: Psychedelic Rock : Progressive Rock
Release Date: 3.17.09
UPC: 656605959122
Territories: World
Well, you wanted something unique, something all of your friends hadn’t heard before, something … beyond. Enter Zenlo, a mysterious and unknown experimental artist from yesteryear. His album Skelethal Antics is being released by Porter Records for the first time since its 1983 recording. Eclectic, uninhibited, and generally strange, the album is virtually incomparable. While it houses a lot of its basic instrumentation in psychedelic rock and krautrock experimentation, this really can’t be lumped into any genre except “experimental”. All of the tracks are improvisational (noise fans rejoice!) and recorded on the first take. Zenlo, or Napoleon Camassa, recorded each song based on some inspiration he had in the moment, ranging from William Blake’s hallucinations in the 1800’s to the infamous Guy Fawkes gunpowder plot. They range in sonic stylings from the 8-bit driving soundtrack “At A German Fun Fair” to the delayed, reverbed, droning saxophone in “War Prayer,” a eulogy for the Hiroshima bombings that sounds eerily like an air-raid siren. The album’s final track, “Remote Viewing,” is a tribute to the sunset of the industrial age; it has a sweet, gentle piano gently washing up in the track’s background while a high-pitched electronic whistling (pretty-much the stereotypical UFO noise) causes a strong juxtaposition between the gentle and the weird. Not much is known about who Zenlo is, other than he is Italian, lives in London, played in various psych and experimental bands in the 60’s and 70’s (but we couldn’t tell you which ones), is in his 50’s and has a family, and that he claims to be “Zenlo the Comet,” literally a comet flying through space. His traces are scattered and few, most of which end up becoming more misleading than the last. He does still write poetry, which is available on his Myspace, but no music seems to have spawned from his 80’s project. Overall the album is definitely unusual, unique, and other-worldly. If you’re feeling like taking a trip, check out Skelethal Antics on its March 17th release.
Related Posts:
Tags: Zenlo
