Deadbeat: Wail Ball and Cry / Dub Ball and Flange
ZamZam
Schlachthofbronx: Dun Dem / Soundbad
ZamZam
To its credit and my unstinting admiration, ZamZam continues to resolutely hold to its “No repress, no digital” ethos with these latest seven-inch singles, Deadbeat's edition 700 copies in total and Schlachthofbronx's a hundred more. In a world where streaming and downloads have rendered music ever more dispensable, there's something wonderful about a label that commits itself so wholly to the distinctive physical presentation of its products.
Canadian-born Berlin resident Scott Monteith has maintained a remarkably high quality level throughout his Deadbeat career, which has seen him issue dub-inflected material on multiple labels, among them ~scape and his own BLKRTZ, and now he brings the same time-honed quality to this new two-tracker. It's actually the second Deadbeat release on ZamZam, the first having appeared during the label's first year of operation, though, truth be told, it doesn't present two unrelated tracks but rather vocal and dub treatments of the same tune. In the A-side's “Wail Ball and Cry,” a crisp, mid-tempo skank rolls out first, followed by a bone-dry bass line, melodica accents, and a weary male vocalist, who shares his lonely song with anyone who'll listen. With all of it wrapped in a cozy blanket of reverb, the tune's three-and-a-half minutes pass quickly but are seductive nonetheless. With the vocal stripped out, the flip's “Dub Ball and Flange” compensates for the singer's absence by beefing up its reverb and echo and in so doing pushing the dub vibe to a seriously intoxicating level.
In their genre-defying Schlachthofbronx productions, Munich duo Bene (Graf Stierenfroed) and Jakob (DJ-King Augenring) meld dub, house, electro, and bass music into a polyglot stew; ZamZam likens their material to some weird riff on PIL, Mad Professor, and Basic Channel, and that seems as good a characterization as any. On the opening “Dun Dem,” bloopy synthesizer effects and echo-drenched shout-outs (“Thunder!”) merge with a sing-song keyboard riff and a deliciously stepping groove to dizzying effect. Repetitions of the keyboard phrase deepen the hypnotic effect, but the ‘thock' of the snare, the serpentine thrust of the bass line, and the charge of the groove resonate as memorably. It's not easy matching the opener's madcap brilliance, but the slightly downshifted “Soundbad” rises to the occasion with an equally enticing mix of reverb-soaked snares, vocal exclamations, bass throb, and swishing hi-hats, with all of it spiked midway through by percussive clangorous that startles the senses like an alarm going off.August 2018