Jazz rock for psych heads, global sounds for jazz minds, or the steaming soundtrack to a midnight desert rave? For sure, Echoes of Zoo fuse influences from all over the musical earth into countless electrifying grooves.
Follow up to their acclaimed debut record 'BREAKOUT' (2021), the quartet's new album 'Speech of Species', to be released on May 12th 2023 via W.E.R.F. Records, is deepening their already eclectic sound further once again.
Still packed with a lot of sonic energy and a fair amount of punk- and dub flavours, Echoes of Zoo are this time blending in a big bunch of (Middle) Eastern and Balkan sounds, microtonal guitars, animal communication transformed into melodies and a host of new rhythmic experiments based on Brazilian and West African grooves.
While 'BREAKOUT' was an interesting musical interpretation of the confrontation between humans and animals and breathed the vibes of cities and clash of cultures, Nathan Daems (saxophonist, composer and bandleader) was this time inspired by the communication of animals amongst each other. That's why he named this new record 'Speech of Species'.
"Messages are constantly being transmitted in the animal world by adopting body poses: there are more than 2,000 different poses or "words" in certain lizard species, by dancing in the most ingenious ways, by changing colours from geometric patterns (certain species of squids and chameleons do this), by causing vibrations in the ground, by smells, even by giving light and so on. How can we be so blind to that and say that animals cannot speak?"
Language and music sometimes coincide completely. Changes of melody or rhythm are generally used by many animal species to make a specific statement, and this is what Echoes of Zoo also tries to do through their compositions. But music can also be purely instrumental, with no fixed meaning. In this, Nathan again sees a parallel with the animal world: "Surprisingly, it appears that many songbirds sing much more frequently than is necessary to communicate. That would indicate that they enjoy making melodies."
Echoes of Zoo is the unity of four distinctive Belgian (jazz)musicians: Nathan Daems (saxophone; cfr. Black Flower, Trance Plantations), Bart Vervaeck (el. guitar; cfr. Compro Oro, The Tubs), Lieven Van Pée (el. bass; cfr. De Beren Gieren, John Ghost) & Falk Schrauwen (drums; cfr. Compro Oro, Sylvie Kreusch).
