By: Michael Madavi
Artist: Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra
Title: Kollaps Tradixionales
Label: Constellation
Genre: Avantgarde/Experimental : Rock
UPC: 666561006327
Territory: World
Release Date: 02.08.10
After a change of personnel in summer 2008, Montreal’s Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra has emerged renewed and energized. Officially dropping the “Tra-La-La Band’ from its name, the critically-acclaimed Constellation Records group presents their sixth full-length recording, Kollaps Tradixionales. Having shed three members and recruited one (drummer David Payant), SMZ now consists of the (now lone) fried electric guitar and plangent voice of band leader Efrim Menuck (who previously co-founded Godspeed You! Black Emperor ), rammed by a swirling widescreen backdrop of dual violins, courtesy Sophie Trudeau and Jessica Moss, and Thierry Amar’s upright bass work. The group continues to remain dynamic and evolutionary, creating a fantastic new album that pushes their already painstakingly developed sound even further with a newly hardened emphasis on lyrics/vocals and a perfect blend of classical, modern, and otherworldly sounds.
While the violins are now serving up arpeggiated runs and modernist strokes that counterbalance and destabilize the more conventional progressions at the core of any given song or movement, Amar’s steady and fortified bass work serves as a fantastic anchor for the others’ musical wanderings and ensures they never move too far away from the group as a whole while displaying his fluency and alliance with free jazz, improv and out music. Payant’s drum work is tastefully applied, correctly aligning with the others’ patterns, emphasis, and tones; in short, it’s like he’s been here for years. Of course Menuck’s super fuzzy, lunging and swirling guitar is as present as ever, but this time with an even further emphasized vocal role (which he affects almost as heavily). The album is packed into four parts: The introduction, the two part “Metal Bird” section, the “collapse” suite of three tracks, and a pretty-damn-epic closer.
A massive crowd favorite during concerts in recent years, “Metal Bird”, as it has been known to fans from set lists over the past couple of years, is included in full recorded form as the two tracks, “I Built Myself a Metal Bird,” and, “I Fed My Metal Bird The Wings Of Other Metal Birds.” Together, the tracks form one of the most memorable moments on the record. A notably jagged and energetic start fires the song off at a thunderous pace. The violins take diving runs around the track’s edges, helping to expand the song’s panorama and coloring the track with their sweet, velvety voices. The first half builds to a full on war scene in 7/4 time, with Efrim in the middle screaming “dance mother fuckers” like he was firing rounds at your feet till the environment collapses and the song’s second half begins: a deadened, war-torn field peppered with emaciated single notes that faintly ringing out in the first half’s wake. This is some heady stuff.
Fans of Menuck’s work in Godspeed! will find a happy home here, and anyone who enjoys hearing very detailed, epic, vivid musical scenes being painted (say Explosions in the Sky) should definitely give Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra a shot.
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Tags: Constellation Records, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra
