This new series of communications from Neurot Recordings will revisit the depth of our catalog. We're calling it DEEP CUTS, and our hope is to bring attention to these amazing artists and their sounds. We will focus not only on the obscure and unsung, but also the historically significant and influential works that we have had the honor of releasing.
DEEP CUTS #1
NR011
RELEASED: 2001
ZENI GEVA is one of the most punishing and relentlessly devastating bands to ever burst your skull open, crushing blow after blow with only slight moments of reprieve in a psychedelic vortex.
Formed in Tokyo in 1987 and led by renowned experimental noise artist KK Null, this explosive and innovative rock unit was spawned out of the unique Japanese extreme noise scene. The sounds emanating from across the Pacific were harsh, challenging, and alien to most music heads in the west.
We were first introduced to their music by Mason Jones of Charnel Music, an early champion of independent noise from Japan. He arranged for us to play with ZENI GEVA at the Kennel Club in San Francisco in 1992. After seeing them live and listening to their early records, we were completely blown away. Drawing comparisons to certain artists or movements in heavy music seems rather pointless, as they completely stand on their own unique mountain, but I will give it a shot just to be able to put up some signposts: somehow they combined the crushing, slow burn anger of Swans, the aggression of hardcore, the noise rock guitars of the Midwest and also make you think of the progressive nature of King Crimson, or things more cosmic, but all from a unique and original perspective.
We released 10,000 Light Years back in May 2001, the band's seventh album. Recorded by Steve Albini at Chicago's Electrical Audio, the album features Null - long-known for making his own instruments - creating a frenzy of static and distortion from own electrical creation, the "nulltron." -Steve Von Till
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