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Zhongyu — Super Z Attack Team
(Bandcamp Right Brain Records RBR083, 2025, CD / DL)

by Peter Thelen, Published 2025-11-30

Super Z Attack Team Cover art

Time really flies; it seems like just a few years ago that Zhongyu released their debut album "Zhongyu" Is Chinese For "Finally" on Moonjune, but in truth it’s been a full nine years. During that time the band has shrunk from a quintet to a trio — though in fact “Super Z Attack Team” was used as the  band name any time they would play live in a trio configuration. As time went on, the impracticality of keeping a five-piece band going became evident and guitarist Dennis Rea and violinist Alicia DeJoie stepped away, which in turn required a change from recording in a live group setting to recording the parts piecemeal through overdubbing in a mobile studio. Through all that time bandleader and composer Jon Davis kept on doing what he does, composing new material and arranging that material for a trio presentation, while keeping in mind that eventually when it came time to record everything, different methods would need to be used. The band today is drummer Randy Doak, James DeJoie on baritone sax, alto sax, clarinet, bass clarinet, concert flute, wooden flute, percussion, and voices, and Jon Davis on Chapman Stick, hardware and software synthesizers, guzheng, theremin, toy piano, Otamatone, field recordings, programming, didgeridoo, and percussion, along with all the engineering, mixing, and production. The album contains nine tracks that combine a number of musical styles in varying quantities from jazz to progressive rock to ambient to what one might describe as math-funk with a bit of world music tossed in for good measure. Some of what’s here sounds like the next step in the direction King Crimson was going with Discipline, without the vocals of course. There are voice samples mixed into some of the tracks along with field recordings and such, but mixing vocals into the experimental nature of much of this music would seem kind of pointless, so it’s safe to call it instrumental. The opener, “Plan of Attack,” begins in a dreamy ambient style, slowly introducing the clarinets and percussion amid swirling Mellotron sounds, building intensity until the floor starts shaking, then pulls back somewhere near where it all began. That cool slapping funk begins on “Gang of Three” with all kinds of interesting found sounds hovering just below the surface, but it’s the muscular bari sax that drives the piece forward. The epic length “Worm Jets vs Murphys Claw” begins in a similar vein, though it’s really like four pieces in one, stopping and changing directions at several points along its thirteen-minute duration, though the piece is always moving forward with Doak’s precise cadence, the latter half fused with interesting field recordings and bizarre sounds. “11.9% ABV” is at once both powerful and aggressive, containing a fair amount of swagger — and speaking of swagger, “Insta Graham Poser” fields a strong jazz element throughout its four minutes. Yeah, it was a long wait from 2016, but the quality of the material in these grooves is sublime.

Filed under: New releases, 2025 releases

Related artist(s): James DeJoie, Zhongyu / Super Z Attack Team

More info
http://zhongyu.bandcamp.com/album/super-z-attack-team

 

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