Review: Zomby, One Foot Ahead of the Other EP

There were rumours that this EP would return to the same territory as last year’s Zomby EP rather than the oldskool digression of Where were u in ’92?. It doesn’t revisit either, but that’s OK – with One Foot Ahead of the Other, it’s finally become clear that we should abandon any hope of tying Zomby down (which, of course, would probably get boring). Instead, it seems he’s an artist who opens the minds and widens the palettes of listeners with each successive release, presenting us with both new and old alike as if he were the eccentric tour-guide of a large and diverse musical museum.
All these images are of sculptures by Naum Gabo, which I added some psychedelic colour to. See also César Domela, El Lissitzky, Vladimir Tatlin and Richard Lippold.
Like the Zomby EP though, One Foot Ahead of the Other explores a fresh new musical language, but where the first EP showed us the sublime with its complex mass of looming structures exhilaratingly balanced on the threshold of human comprehension, this one shows us the beautiful: a ballet of delicate, crystalline structures spinning elegantly like diatoms underneath the microscope. The previously monstrous arpeggios are replaced with abstract studies in the unfurling of intricate pitch sequences, a technique that was first explored on the older EP in the maximalist spinning-top of ‘Kaliko’ and one that reminds me of Paul Klee’s description of his own artistic technique: ‘taking a line for a walk’. One Foot Ahead of the Other could well be named after the stepwise motion of the quasi-scalic monophony that pervades this gratifyingly cohesive batch, this thorough investigation of a particular – and particularly beautiful – musical palette.Zomby’s method of hypnotically developing musical structure through the systematic expansion and contraction of metres, rhythms and pitch sequences is from a different galaxy to most dance music – and it isn’t just an experiment either, on this EP it’s a fully-formed and comprehensive stylistic proposition. This musical style shifts metrical configurations as if they were gears on some abstract, geometrical bicycle, driven constantly and inexorably forward by robotic feet. It always has such a momentum. ‘Helter Skelter’, its title suggesting a different kind of spinning motion, is a case in point, it’s a svelte ‘Kaliko’ trimmed down to drums and two parts which are gradually entwined, sometimes in parallel, sometimes in contrary motion, into a rotating double helix... until we land with a bump at the end, where the entire track’s pitch sequences are compressed into crushed, dissonant chords.It’s not just the textures that are thin, delicate and minimalist, but also the tone quality of the synthesisers themselves. As if in cheeky response to the deep and flabby basslines that have dominated certain dancefloors in recent years, these synths are cold, high-pitched and fiddly constructions that shower down like hundreds and thousands, and the lightly skittering 2-step beats that accompany them are a perfect percussive match. Fascinatingly, these tracks seem miniscule in size, they’re intricate miniatures, sonically and structurally pure – to pump up the volume would be to achieve very little and arguably do them wrong. Instead, this disc seems to work well at different speeds: higher tempos reveal the overall structural design most keenly, while slower tempos have a fuller sound and bring the stepwise motion to the fore.
Delicate abstractions these tracks may be, but humourless they are not. Each voice can be heard as a personified dancer, conscientiously repetitious and yet stumbling charmingly over the odd drop of micro-wonk, and the blowing of tiny, buzzing bubbles into the ears is sure to raise a ticklish smile. The background synths with their modest oscillating phasers might be characters from an ambient jungle toy town. ‘Pumpkinhead’s Revenge’ could be the name of a bizarre children’s game with its dissonant and gestural riff, the last section of which is repeated like a playground chant, while mock-serious bangin gym beats and cheesy lo-tech tom fills heighten the absurdity.One Foot Ahead of the Other is another characteristically inventive and surprising step on a tour through Zomby’s rich musical mind. As I type this, Zomby tweets that new releases are on their way – I’m probably not the only one who’s dying to see where he’ll take us next.
Though it’s well worth a read (as always with Woebot), this review of the new EP did leave me a bit cold if only because it was so heavily indicative of a certain prevalent sort of criticism. Lengthy and arguably needless preoccupation with context and ‘explanation’, particularly concerning the role of narcotics? Check. Attempt to naturalise a tendentious contextual history of the music? Check. Dominance of nostalgic connotations? Check. Less than imaginative regret over the passing of the past (i.e the absence of ‘Aquafresh’)? Check. Gratuitous reference to Simon Reynolds? Check. Lack of musical detail? Check. Hollow promises of greatness? Check. Plugs the release into a cynical wider narrative, probably about the end of history? Well no of course, but there’s only so much word count to go around. Zomby is reductively painted as a drug-enabled infant – we definitely owe this music more than that. Time for a new sort of criticism perhaps?