A Limb is a well-known Second Life musician (maybe some knows as Mich Reblack), but he also has a real life, and he plays in several bands. Of the various bands he plays in, my favorite is ZAÄAR. a Belgian collective born from a rib of NEPTUNIAN MAXIMALISM, the cosmic free-jazz orchestra that in the last two years catalyzed the attention of those in love with psychedelic music, experimental drone doom and space ambient.
Below is a short story about ZAÄAR , straight from the A Limb lips during a conference in Second Life.
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Hello and welcome to my ZAÄAR conference and mini-concert.
I will start by playing recordings of several bands linked to ZAÄAR, then Magická Džungl’a, our first album, while giving some explanations about its creation. Then I’ll play a 20 minutes (maybe more) concert in free improv, using the instruments I used for the album recording.
So at the origin of ZAÄAR is another project called Lab’OMFI. It was a multimedia collective that welcomed all artists who wanted to experiment with improvisation.
The creator and main leader of this group was Jean Jacques Duerinckx, a formidable saxophonist who played among others with some of the best improvisers: Lol Coxhill, John Russell, Paul Rutherford, Dan Warburton, Michel Doneda. He is also involved in the Belgian electro-acoustic scene.
He also played on a Zohara album, published on Tzadik (John Zorn’s label)
https://www.discogs.com/fr/Zohara-Scorched-Lips/release/1196212
I was very interested by improv, Specially Jean Jacque’s approach (I always incorporated some improvisation in all my earlier projects, but until then it was not an end in itself) and became a member of this collective almost from the start.
I played synths and iPad apps using granular synthesis. I’ll give some more infos about it later
Other future ZAÄAR members also joined Lab’OMFI for more or less long durations: Hugues Philippe Desrosiers (bass) and Guillaume Cazalet CZLT (guitar and trumpet).
After a while, Guillaume Cazalet left the band to found his own, Neptunian Maximalism, an excellent free doom psychedelic drone metal band. JJ Duerinckx joined this new project very soon, as well as the drummer Sébastien Schmit who later will become the drummer of ZAÄAR. And I was invited to join too some months later. Sébastien left the group almost immediately when I arrived, but all the links were made!
Neptunian Maximalism made 8 albums already (some live ones), and toured in France, Germany, Holland, Denmark… We prepare now a tour passing by Duisburg, Paris, London and more to be announced
We were also n° 44 in the year 2020 top 50 of The Wire magazine (the bible of underground music)
https://www.thewire.co.uk/audio/tracks/the-wire-s-releases-of-the-year-2020
If you’re interested to listen/see more about this band, catch these links:
Let’s come back shortly to Lab’OMFI. The problem with such open groups is that, very often, unwanted people who are not in phase with the spirit of the collective impose themselves, and sabotage the rehearsals. After a while we got tired of this formula.
A little before the confinement, Lab’OMFI was abandoned to make room for LamaPhi, a core group of a dozen artists, the most motivated to really work on improv.
LamaPhi performed in the streets during the whole confinement, even in winter 😀 . About 20 events. Most of them were filmed. You can watch them here:
Now the effective ZAÄAR story.
In the first days of January 2020, Philippe Desrosiers (Lab’OMFI’s bassist) called me.
He said “I’m trying to organise an improv concert in St Gilles (Brussels), February 1st, with Jean Jacques Duerinckx (sax), Guillaume Cazalet (Vocals, trumpet, flutes, percs) and Sébastien Schmit (Drums, percs). Would you be interested to join?
I answered yes of course. I can’t say “no”… Then he told me “It’s a very narrow place, you’ll see. We’ll have to get organized…”
Indeed it was narrow. The place was a hairdressing salon!
… but a very special one. It’s called Espace Moss, and Moussa, the hairdresser is a contemporary art lover. So he decided to use his salon as an art gallery.
It sounds weird but it’s a great idea, from my opinion. Even when you visit a museum, you rarely have one hour to devote to watch a single artwork. In a hairdresser salon, you are even obliged to sit and watch.
Of course Moussa makes arty haircuts too 😉
A hair salon is usually not very large. But the artist invited by Moussa was Yoel Pytowski, an architect, who re-designed the whole shop interior by adding walls, transforming the shop in a sort of middle-east market one-way street. So it was even more narrow.
Anyway, we found some place to install our instruments. When we started playing, the shop was full of people drinking and making noise. But despite this they listened and enjoyed the concert.
The name of the event was called “A Triptych In Sound” because we played 3 improv sessions during the evening. It was rather audacious, because the ability to concentrate during improv is strongly solicited.
But to our surprise we made the good connections right away, and it lasted until the last note. I had only played once with the drummer, and rarely with the bassist, but it was as if we had been playing together all our lives, and our three sessions were quite excellent, full of groove and creativity.
Hmm, the special homemade fruit alcohols served by beautiful fairies were free for the musicians. Maybe it helped too.
So when we left the event we were very happy and satisfied of ourselves.
Sadly, some days later started a quarrel. I was not involved in it, and don’t want to give you details about it. But after this argument, I didn’t give much chance for this band’s future…
… and then COVID arrived, so our musical activities fell into hibernation. The concert became a pleasant but already distant memory
But it’s not finished of course…
In February of 2021, we suddenly got an e-mail from Guillaume. It said: “Hey, maybe you didn’t notice, but I recorded the concert with my pocket digital recorder. I spent months cleaning and masterising the tracks. I think it sounds good. If you’re ok, I already have agreements with 2 disc companies so that a double vinyl album could be published this year. What do you think?”.
The album art was ready too (made by Peter Kľúčik – Untitled). Everyone agreed.
Personally I consider Guillaume to be a true mixing genius. Getting an album that sounds so good out of a concert recorded in the middle of a noisy crowd, in a reverberating room, with the only internal microphone of a pocket recorder, is a real miracle.
… and 2 Neptunian Maximalism albums were made the same way. We never went into a studio. It’s simply concerts and rehearsals recordings…
I think what makes the strength of this band is the bass and drums sections. They are both flexible and reliable. They can range from pure noise to rock funk rhythmics, while keeping a full coherence. It makes the improvisations of the other members very comfortable and it is very inspiring
Guillaume is a very skilled guitarist. But in this band he abandons his favourite instrument to devote himself to the flutes, the voice and the trumpet. He is very interested in occult sciences, religions and cults of the past, voodoo,… So you often hear throat singing, murmurs or readings of texts in unknown languages. All this was handled by its many effects pedals. For the most recent concerts, he gave up the effects and it still sounds awesome, more than ever.
On my side, I often use an iPad app called “Samplr“.This allows me to record what other musicians are playing, to select live very short excerpts and then to process these sounds with effects, to loop them, etc. That’s why it’s sometimes difficult to distinguish myself from other musicians, because I use the same sounds.
I also use a modular synth application called miRack. It is a kind of equivalent of Reaktor, for iPad. It is possible to build your own synths or your own effects. It produces some great experimental sounds.
https://www.musictech.net/news/mirack-modular-ipad-synth/
And finally I also play the MicroFreak, a small synth that is also very experimental, with touch sensitive keys.
So now everyone reconciled, we started rehearsing for more concerts, and noticed the magic was still there when we played together. And now we have already new recordings for more albums. A new one is planned for the end of this year.
The first album was out November 5th, 2021 in a 2×12″LP Vinyl format in Gatefold Sleeve, Ltd 700 (350 Yellow, 350 Green) – Available on Bandcamp of course.
Colored vinyls 😉
https://zaaar.bandcamp.com/album/magick-d-ungl-a
The album is financially produced by 3 labels:
I, Voidhanger Records, excellent experimental metal label:
https://i-voidhangerrecords.bandcamp.com/
WV Sorcerer Productions 巫唱片, an avant-garde esoteric music label managed by a wonderful chinese/french artist called Ruò Tán:
https://wvsorcerer.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/wvsorcerer
… and HOMO SENSIBILIS SOUNDS, Guillaume Cazalet’s own label: