Zohastre – Abracadabra

Zam-Zam / La République des Granges

Building on the spacey krautrock shivers of their 2018’s Pan And The Master Pipers LP, Zohastre‘s Abracadabra salivates like a mediævalised motorik.

Vivid and laser-locked, this sci-fi verve enthusiastically contracts into a an insane neu-techno crowbar of a groove. A brightness that’s squeezed into the dagger dance of “Tarantella”, its folksy core valve-smurfed into a repetitive dazzle as that snare sonically snips to be steak-knifed by sudden air horn, then serotonin-seeping a garbled melody.

Abracadabra is ace, its energy infectious, the percussively bulleted “Esplumeor” over-driven and driving. I’m hearing imprisoned vocals or clangers; then they suddenly pull an euphorically burnt serenade from out of their sleeves. Loving all these super-hard beats and surfing electronics, a liberating glow to be drawn into, a percussively shunted space getting messy with the cross-pollination, grabbing plenty of esoteric inspiration.

This group’s feelers are all over the place, past / future / fantasy – cauldron-boiling a reactive mythology on their own terms. This was what music was like before that talent show copy shop banished originality.

The prog-a-tron-like sliver of “El Tuco”, name-checking the oafish bandit from The Good, The Bad And The Ugly as the tune skin-slips on stapled fruiting frictions, followed on by this sped-up Highland jig full of braille-bumped pins and waspy warp. I’m thinking Boredoms eclectic; then the loose’n’lovely Faust-inspired motor of “Wizzarding” topples that impression, jibber-worms in maggoting sonic scribble, gets me cursing those lazy journo pens we like to herd our sonic experiences into.

Truth be told. I’m usually into gloomy insecurity with a more than a dash of darkness; but I’m finding myself an eager convert to Abracadabra’s inventive glare. Its gun-slinging enthusiasm bruising me out of my dirge-loving complacency as that spire quake-caked rasping guitar and slamming bite of “Spleen” apple-cores a sibilant post-rock sunset, that leaves “Rondes Et Chansons”‘ glitchy European folk-scene to woo me to the finish line.

A playful pinch of neon paganism rupturing in a spin-washed elasticated whir-ration – what’s not to like?

-Michael Rodham-Heaps-