If you aren’t already acquainted with Melbourne eight-piece band, NO ZU, we advise that you start informing yourself now. The ‘heat-beat’ band, have recently signed with Chapter Music, who have plans to release their second LP, Afterlife, in early 2016.
The band describes their music as ‘the wild, heat-beat sounds of the New Age- a gaudy mixture of colours and textures that dance a desert dance of the antipodean kind’. The description is fitting, everything about them; from their sound to their look; even the way they replace star signs for instruments in their list of members, screams New Age.
NO ZU was born in 2007, but it took five years for us to see the release of their debut album, Life. While they have amassed a steady following since their formation, 2015 is their year. The group has set flight, and are now recognised by the local music scene, even scoring a sweet spot on Cut Copy’s Melbourne dance compilation, Oceans Apart.
Now armed with a record deal and an upcoming album, it will be interesting to see just where this takes the idiosyncratic band.
Along with the announcement of their signing to Chapter Music, they have also dropped their new single, Ui Yia Uia (pronounced, “Yi Yah Yah”). Described by the band as a ‘deep boogie sway of the astrological elements at a weight-lifting sweat-fest Heat Beat party,’ the track is exuberant to say the least. It is a meeting of a wide and eclectic array of elements. It is peppered with horns, otherworldly vocals, outstanding percussion which, when delivered in this manner, just click together so pleasurably.
Ui Yia Uia is out digitally on Chapter Music and can be downloaded via the Chapter website.