A bartender buddy of mine used to make this drink — the Coffee Bomb Special — as an assistance aid for writing: twelve ounces of fresh coffee, liberal amounts of cream, two raw sugars and then three shots of espresso sunk in when I wasn’t looking. I would innocently have two, and six hours later I’d still be vibrating at my desk. Zod’s latest compilation, Dura Matters, lashes me with such a hyper-kinetic amount of breakbeats and mashed samples that I feel like I’ve just downed my second CBS and am starting my third.
This is the sort of hyper-beat blowout that I’m familiar with from Otto Von Schirach’s schizophrenic work and he’s represented here with “Roach Motel,” a scattered, cut-up of a song that starts, stops, changes direction and elevation nearly three hundred times every minute. While Yuppster’s “Mirror-Eyed Girl Street Samurai” is a kinder, gentler introduction to the meat of Dura Matters with its spritely pop song structure, matters go epileptic quickly as “7s” erupts from the speakers. Terminal11 puts the thumbscrews down so tightly on “7s” that you almost fear that your CD player is going to explode in its effort to shoot beats and cut-up samples in 47 different directions.
Exillon’s “Dhme” burns out in a minute and a half, expelling its complete song structure in about three breaths. Its beats dash and sparkle, and jewel tones cascade around the complex programming. There are even three seconds of silence at the end — a near eternity in the time distorted world of Zod — and you can almost hear your own brain spinning in the vacuum left by “Dhme.” Not content with the level of hyperactivity already present in his mash up/paste up, Eight Frozen Modules throttles his beats as if he’s applied a 100 horsepower motor to his turntable and broken off the speed knob. Com.A just brain dumps on us with “Miami Planet.” That’s the only way to describe it really.
Gridlock even takes a spin at the saturated beat splatter, lending their emotional gravitas to “Displacement” which — compared to the preceding hour of spastic beats — is a leisurely stroll in a quiet park. Though, hiding beneath the gorgeous melodies are tiny scampering beat structures, a miniature universe of chaotic movement swimming beneath the placid surface. “Displacement” is a wonderful calm within the eye of the hurricane of Dura Matters.
The press blurb from Zod HQ states that the imagined cycle to Dura Matters is a seasonal one, a journey that mirrors the spring and autumnal seasons and Emotional Joystick’s “This Time” soars with a melodic interpretation of a fall sunset. However, beneath that liminal skyline is the thrashing, rushing grid-work of a major metropolitan city; while the sky is awash with bands of gentle color, the ground is a furious mass of tiny lights. There’s your cycle, really: life and death, fading light and splintered darkness, chaos and order. The artists of Zod build tracks which are like hummingbirds: still and calm through a supremely frenetic effort, though if you look too closely, your brain will die trying to follow the movement necessary to keep the tiny bird aloft.
Dura Matters is OUT NOW on ZOD featuring Yuppster, Terminal11, Emotional Joystick, Groundchuck, Exillon, Eight Frozen Modules, Otto Von Schirach, Com.A, Curtis Chip, Tangible, Vaporizer, Soplerfo, Gridlock, and Binray.
