If the internet has shrunk our attention spans as its magic pudding of music has engorged us with more tunes than we could ever calmly consume, then the hyperactive, hyper-referential music of Austin duo Zorch is the logical outcome.
Like Animal Collective, Zorch are maximalists who compress their sounds into ADHD’s aural equivalent. ‘Inopportune Sailing’ and ‘Cosmic Gloss’ are embedded in a dense tangle of what could be the jingles and buzzer buttons of every TV game show ever aired, while ‘Mutwa’ ranges from finger-clicking free jazz to experimental electro-acoustic before a crescendo surely recorded inside a poker machine jammed in jackpot mode. Their “yelly” repetitive chants, more like rallying cries than lyrics, evoke Tasmanian experimentalists, Paint Your Golden Face.
Zzoorrcchh’s songs flow into songs, as stimulus flows into over-stimulus, leading to a sense of over-caffeinated optimism, even on ‘We All Die Young’, with its rousing yet hopeless chant: “A side we lost / Because we all die young”.
[rating: 3.5]
