Age of Steel: Z'EV

Article for the Z'EV interview:

I guess I should be thankful for things like mid-life crises. It seemed like a stupid enough period of your life. You buy the proverbial red sports car, run off with the proverbial blond secretary, and leave the proverbial safe family. If you never got to the point of the safe family, then you have to resort to alternatives like kicking junk, or robbing blood banks. And if you were preoccupied the first half of your life with doing really interesting and creative things, it seems that the mid-life can serve as a chance to get back to your roots. Such is the case for all of the many bands I had the misfortune to grow up after, and the complete surprise and excitement when presented with an opportunity to catch em on the second (or fifth) go-round. Everybody is back together these days. And for an out of place anachronism like me, it couldn't have come at a better time. Naked Raygun, the Effigies, X, Bauhaus, Mission of Burma, fucking Big Black played a show, the Stooges are freaking back together with a new album out, as are the New York Dolls, Goddamn Question Mark and the Mysterians just played here, even Throbbing Gristle got back together. There are parts of me that don't know how to feel about the zombie uprising, but then again, was it fair to have even declared these bands dead in the first place.

Case in point: I got to see Z'EV the other night at the Empty Bottle. Now Z'EV was filed away in the back of my mind in the same place I keep dimitridons, and gladiatorial combat. I'd read about them in books and they sounded cool, but the thought of seeing the real thing in real life is just not a thought you'd ever have. But there he was. I shook his hand. We spoke. There's not only audio, but visual proof that he's still out there. Like finding one more Tasmanian tiger decades after they were supposed to be extinct, there's Z'EV up there, and he's doing stuff that I've still never seen or heard before. The tones that have been hiding inside the metal all around us are breath taking, and Z'EV has this uncanny ability to bring them out into our world. Just tones and patterns pouring out of this otherwise inert matter that you could probably find in a scrapyard. But these are fine tuned instruments. You really get an impression of the deliberateness of his performance seeing it all live. He sat crouched on his knees, and brought a different song out of each object he had on stage. I've never been so amazed with all the variation of the spectrum of sound as I was the other night.

When we spoke, we spent a lot of time discussing the electronic communities, and the house scenes in which Z'EV was instrumental while living in Europe, but what you lose in electronics is real sound. It is just a simulation no matter how much we progress. There is something magic in pure sound, and Z'EV is one of the most potent shaman that I am aware of. I am personally glad he's back to doing what he does. After a 21 year absence from Chicago, and nearly as long a time spent away from music and art in general, you need only see him now as evidence that art need not age at all.

See also: Z'EV Interview