Introdewcing captures a Snails live performance in Dallas in July 2006. The trio of Nevada Hill (guitar, oscillator, ebow), Michael Chamy (sine wave, shortwave, keys) and Mike Forbes (saxophone) confounded onlookers at an exhibition of Hill’s art at the underground clothing store Counter Culture Vintage, with a barrage of tonal abstraction and patient melodic interplay, dissolving into patches of pure static drone. Forbes’ richly lyrical playing erupts at times into Coltrane-style squealing outbursts, meshing with Hill’s alternately sharp and textural oscillating guitar work and Chamy’s droning sine wave and short wave blankets.  Audible in patches throughout is the ambient crowd noise, which melds with the staticky drones and crackles to ominous effect.

 

REVIEWS

Reviews of 2006 live full-length Introdewcing … The Zanzibar Snails

 

 

“Tongue wiggling saxopohonics, spacey synthesizer frequencies, guitar disfigurement, slow motion car crash collisions of shapeless voids and looming potentialities delivered like somnolent belly dances. Crossing lines between noise and melodicism, improvisation, and occurrence. . This four track CDR was recorded live in a clothing store in a mall in Dallas, Texas; which conjures the healthy concept of art spontaneously erupting from any number of unlikely locations. Highly transportational and satisfying.”

 – George Parsons, Dream Magazine

 

 

“Thank god for Texan underground music. The list of Texan musical discoveries that in one way or the other have changed the way I look upon music is very extensive. I wouldn’t say that the Zanzibar Snails’ Introdewcing album has that sort of effect but it’s still a really inspiring listening experience. The opening “On An Oblong Plane” is a 29 minutes long number that is a constantly evolving composition with some beautiful sax staggered alongside washes of guitar abstraction and crackling electronics. Its alienating, enveloping sound, seemingly devoid from any notion of sense, wanders freely like a drunk trying to cross a busy city street.

The unexpected use of saxophone gives the dark, unsettling noise/drone sculpture a slight free jazz touch but that’s just an additional flavor as what this is all about is to continue along that trajectory line towards bliss-out spectrum with a static electronic drone feast garnished with enough personal twists to make it stand out as something very unique, even in an abstract corner of the music universe.
 a trajectory line towards bliss-out spectrum with a static electronic drone feast garnished with enough personal twists to make it stand out as something very unique, even in an abstract corner of the music universe.”

– Mats Gustafsson, The Broken Face

 

 

“A very promising discovery in recent months is the axis of improvised electro-acoustic music in and around the Denton, Texas area. An off shoot of space rock drone trippers iDi*amin (good time to go by that name!), The Zanzibar Snails conjure a brooding noise/jazz drone across the four live tracks captured on their “Introdewcing” CD-R, chronicling their first live last summer in Dallas. Props to the eye-popping packaging with its womb-like iconography, but what’s contained inside is the real reward here with dark melodies comprised of crackling currents of electronic hum beneath a cryptic bed of warped sax groans and oblique guitar plucks. Fans of the subtler side of early industrial noise, AMM, New Zealand free noise and such should take note. 7/10”

 - Lee Jackson, Foxy Digitalis

1. On An Oblong Plane (29:05)

2. Indignity (8:44)

3. Egress (4:30)

4. The Pendulum, the Dirigible (2:01)

Produced by Michael Chamy

Album design by Nevada Hill

($7 postpaid)

Michael Chamy - sine wave, shortwave, drones

Mike Forbes - saxophone

Nevada Hill - guitar, ebow, drones