Zone Six | Love Monster
Label: CD Love Monster – 2015 Sulatron Records
LP Love Monster – 2015 Deep Distance Recordings
Release Year: 2015
Country: Germany
Genre: Progressive Psychedelic Acid Improvisations
Band Members
Modulfix – Synths!
Sula Bassana – Drums (Electric Moon, Krautzone…)!
Rainer Neeff – Guitar (The Pancakes, Krautzone)!
Komet Lulu – Fuzz Bass (Electric Moon, Krautzone)!
Official Zone Six Facebook Page
After a lengthy absence Zone Six have returned with Love Monster. Zone Six are part of a community of bands that ‘play it on the fly’ meaning improvised. Progressive Psychedelic Improvised music is prog rock’s best kept secret. What do I mean by ‘improvised’ ? A band basically gets together and has a jam session where they just play. This style of prog rock requires a lot of trust. Typically the bands are not sitting at a easel with any or very little staff paper writing notes like most bands would. This requires a lot more trust among band members as to where to follow one time signature or passage to another. Trust to also follow the lead with your instrument and when to hang back.
For the better part of 18 years Zone Six have been among one of the pioneers of this style of free form jam band improvised progressive rock. They are right up there sharing the top of the ladder with bands like Oresund Space Collective, Tribe of Cro, Hydria Spacefolk to name a few.
Love Monster may be only be 4 tracks long, however it is still a masterpiece. The keyboards are not only keyboards, they serve as modern day synth’s to retro mellotron and hammond organs. The keyboards are like a second backbone along with the drums. The title track Love Monster opens with a wicked fuzzy bass and deep bass drums that appear to be detuned on purpose to give it an old school retro FM radio experience.
The Insight the second track on the album begins with a real trippy effect. The synth is as if they took a old quadraphonic recording and remastered it on 5.1 surround sound without losing the old school quadraphonic effect. This is such a deep rhythmic track it gives you the impression that even the guitar is played through a bass amp.
By time you get to the third track Acidic it is as the title sounds. It sounds like a complete LSD trip with synths rotating in one hemisphere of the brain in your headset while the deep rhythmic section of the fuzzy bass and drums are going the other way round the other half hemisphere in your headset. Needless to say the band achieves 20 minutes of fury and sound in only under 9 minutes on Acidic
By time you get to the fourth and final track Cosmogyal you get a overview of some elements you encountered in the first three tracks. You get the trippy atmospheric synths, deep detuned psychedelic guitars and a tightly lock step and toe rhythm section between the fuzzy bass and drums. The band also packages wicked 70’s style time signatures with long solos and deep atmospheric effects.
As much as I enjoyed the trip or journey on this album I wish it had been a little longer. It is more of a EP than LP. That is why I can only give it a 4/5.
