ZOND: At Home In The Void

With a celebrated debut album and an endorsement from Lou Reed, Melbourne’s ZOND are hitting a purple patch – but they’re still as enigmatic as ever. Words and photos by RENÉ SCHAEFER.

“I like explosions. I wish fireworks were still legal.”

Justin K Fuller

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] Seeing ZOND live is a truly awe-inspiring experience. Right from the first note, the volume hits you like a wrecking ball. ZOND’s music is a physical force, as much as it consists of notes and textures, chaos and discipline. There is no room for communication at a ZOND show – each member of the audience is isolated, hanging on for dear life. In a way it’s anti-psychedelic music. The effect ZOND have is not one of mind expansion or of community, but of evoking the cold vastness of space, which reduces the individual to utter insignificance. It’s frightening, yet also compellingly beautiful.

It’s hard to believe this music is being created by human beings at times; that’s how alien it is. On stage, the musicians refuse to acknowledge the audience, turning inward on themselves, individually and as a group. Guitarists Marney Macleod and Justin K Fuller create a terrifying strafing machine gun noise, finding and losing rhythms, then burying them under mountains of distortion and feedback. Behind them, Tym Krasevac appears to hit the drums with a complete disregard for rock conventions. His playing has a jazz fluidity to it, channeled through a hardcore punk sensibility. It might seem like he has tuned out from the world around him, but he is always in complete control.

Harriet Morgan, who recently replaced long-time bassist Stephen Thomas, provides a rhythmic anchor. She remains stoic as buildings seemingly collapse around her. Somewhere to the side, ZOND’s newest member, Matthew Brown, is hunched over his vintage synthesizer like a mad scientist, throwing switches and tweaking dials to increase the violence the band is visiting upon its devoted fans. This is the living end.

Before they became ZOND, Krasevac, Macleod and Fuller were in a band called ON. Even further back, they played in Fong and Library Punks – short-lived groups in Melbourne’s ever shifting indie punk scene, that nonetheless were instrumental in laying the foundations for ZOND’s sound. ON had two bass players and released a self-titled album in 2006, which featured the fried noise classic ‘We’ve Got TV’ and a whole host of classic songs that married lurching, Black Sabbath-esque grooves with thick blankets of scuzz-core guitar.

Mark Nelson of The Stabs replaced Elise Bishop and Toni Kendall on bass and the band morphed into ZOND, the name referencing a series of Soviet unmanned space missions undertaken from 1964 to 1970 and an eponymous archaic Soviet arcade game. Though they played quite a few shows with Nelson, the band really came into their own when Stephen Thomas took over bass duties. His playing style and contribution to songwriting pushed ZOND to new creative heights, and it’s this phase of their existence which is documented to stunning effect on their recently released debut album.

Talking to the members of ZOND a few weeks ago, it became clear that they are not particularly interested in defining their music in the conventional sense. Gathered around a table in a Fitzroy beer garden, each musician had their own take on what makes the band tick, despite their very different personalities. As they were preparing to travel to NSW to take part in “Noise Night”, an evening of noise at the Sydney Opera House, at the personal invitation of curators Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson, the musicians were guarded and slightly nervous. By their own admission, ZOND don’t really discuss their motives or ideas – even among themselves – yet when prompted to do so they are highly articulate.

One theme that recurs a few times during the interview, is the idea that the band’s music is so volatile that it constantly teeters on the edge of chaos, threatening to implode or blow up at any moment.

“A building site can look the same as a bombed building”, Fuller explains. “All the elements are there,” adds Brown. “There’s a pretty fine line between destruction and construction. You destroy something and you create something else. You can throw a glass on the ground and it turns into something else that it wasn’t before.”

For Macleod, this tension between structure and chaos is at the heart of ZOND’s music. “We practice our songs, but we only do it so we can be confident enough to fuck with them on stage.” Tym Krasevac agrees. “We’re always right on the edge of falling apart. It’s stressful, but it can be a good stress.”

On stage, the impression is often of a simmering anger among band members, but according to Macleod it’s a misconception. “We communicate a lot with nods on stage, because we can’t hear each other.” Krasevac can’t suppress a chuckle. “A look can say a thousand words,” he quips. Macleod lets the good-natured dig slide. “It’s lucky Tym can play along to anything. He can drum to static on the radio.”

Explaining their album’s long gestation period, both as a group of songs and as a recording, Macleod acknowledges the contribution Thomas made to the group. “We had to wait until we had a certain amount of songs that we really liked. We lost Mark, and then we had to get used to working with Steve. His joining created a new formula for songwriting. Mark was more like a session musician; he’d come to one or two rehearsals before a show, but he wasn’t involved in the writing. Steve solidified the band. He came up with simple repetitive bass lines that we could play over the top of.”

Krasevac is equally full of praise for his former bandmate. “Steve could have been a surgeon. He was very precise. In the early days, we were jamming at Marney’s house and that wasn’t the ideal place to progress a lot. There were limitations to when we could play and how loud. It slowed our progress. Steve inspired us to practice regularly at Soundpark [rehearsal studios in Melbourne].”

Macleod: “Steve brought a discipline to the band that we are sticking to, even though he is no longer in the band. He took over the reins when I wasn’t feeling up to the task. It was perfect timing. Now, Harriet is a completely different player to Steve, with a different personality. She is a lot more wild. Her basslines are darker, because she’s more into punk and metal.”

Morgan is philosophical about taking over from a musician who was so important to defining a group’s sound. “Steve was such a perfectionist, so I’m learning techniques I never knew, such as muting strings. I play some of his bass lines, but I change things about them, because I can’t replicate his genius. I’m self-taught, so I have to play my own way. It’s neither better nor worse. It’s weird to watch a band for years and then become involved in it.”

“There’s a pretty fine line between destruction and construction. You destroy something and you create something else. You can throw a glass on the ground and it turns into something else that it wasn’t before.”

The forcefulness of ZOND’s music is something that always held a special attraction for Morgan. “We kind of berate the audience. It’s like an oncoming train. I love being blown away by music, by a wall of intensity. That’s what I got when I used to watch ZOND. Now that I’m actually on stage with them, I can’t hear that anymore, or I have to concentrate more. I don’t have time to appreciate it in the same way. I get anxious and I’m shaking the whole time, but I’m getting much better at playing the bass, being in this band. I play the bass in a very physical way. That’s what I like about the instrument.”

Macleod is effusive in her appreciation of the new blood within the ranks of the group. “We’ve written a few new songs and I like them better than anything we’ve done before. Harriet has brought something dark and raw to the music.”

Like Morgan, keyboard player Brown made the transition from being a fan to being a band member. “When I got asked to join ZOND, I was more excited than I got being asked to play at the Sydney Opera House. As an observer of ZOND, before I joined, I found that they were a really exciting group to watch. They were such a tight-knit unit. They were all such strong individual personalities, but they seemed to join seamlessly. ZOND seemed like something very abstract. They didn’t seem like a pop band, even though they have certain pop sensibilities. ZOND is like an inert substance somehow.”

When it comes to defining what the band does, the musicians are at a loss. “It’s an idea, rather than just a band for the sake of having a band,” Morgan offers. Brown rejects the idea of a definition out of hand. “To me ZOND is not something that can be described; it just is. I like ZOND’s audiences to be selfish. I like them to listen to the music for their own sake, rather than for their friends’ – to create a reality or a world purely for themselves.”

The songwriting process can be just as elusive to describe as trying to pigeonhole ZOND’s sound. Krasevac resorts to an analogy. “I like to think of what we do as ‘Blacksmith Rock’. We really forge the sound. We start off with a hunk of metal and we keep beating it until it becomes something.”

Brown elaborates: “A lot of effort goes into the structure of the songs, but they are not always the same when we play live. It’s not math rock. With the sheer physical volume at rehearsals, there is very little verbalisation about the writing process. It’s directly musical. It’s about listening to the music. We don’t sit around thinking, ‘Oh, it should be a little bit more like this.’ Because the music is so loud, you can’t speak or hear each other anyway.”

“We really don’t talk about it much,” interjects Fuller, who has been quietly listening to his bandmates trying to grapple with nailing down their muse. One gets the sense that this non-verbal communication is indeed at the heart of ZOND’s uniqueness.

Macleod, however, is determined to explain exactly where her inspiration comes from. “Rather than expressing a feeling, ZOND is more of an experiment. Justin and I used to be really into experimental music, but then we started getting bored with seeing noise bands all the time. We decided that we liked the noise, but we wanted melody also, so we tried to combine the two. It’s more about what we decide we don’t want. I might say, ‘Oh my god, we’re starting to sound like Foo Fighters!’ Of course I exaggerate a lot, but that’s where I get a bit ruthless. We dismiss a lot of ideas if they are boring or sound like other things we’ve heard.”

“That’s where editing comes in,” adds Fuller. “We’ve thrown a lot of songs in the bin because of comments one of us has made.”

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] One of the striking features of ZOND is that vocals feature quite heavily in all of their music. Despite the fact that there are multiple singers, often in the same song, it’s very difficult to discern exactly what the words are. This is a deliberate strategy, says Brown. “It would be easy to say that the lyrics don’t matter, but if they didn’t matter, they wouldn’t be there. When you hear a ZOND song, you might not be able to make out the lyrics, but they express emotions that aren’t just ‘love’ or ‘feeling sad’, or something stupid like that. They are lesser shades of emotions, that can’t usually manifest in any written form.”

For Krasevac it comes down to a more primal level, commensurate with his approach to drumming. “A lot of the singing that I contribute isn’t written down as lyrics; it’s more an expression of emotion through singing. The words might actually get in the way. It’s just raw sound most of the time. It’s very spontaneous – I’m excited at the moment of playing and I feel like singing something.”

Ever the abstract thinker, Fuller goes one step further. “In some of my songs, the singing doesn’t even consist of words. It’s just sound. Even if I have written actual words for a song, when I’m playing it live, I’ll revert back to making word-sounds. It’s not a matter of forgetting them, it’s just how I do it.”

“It’s like Justin invents his own language,” Macleod chimes in. “I like to compare him to the backwards talking dwarf in Twin Peaks crossed with Keiji Haino, the Japanese avant-garde guitarist.”

For her part, Macleod embraces a fluid approach. “I usually have a couple of lines written down, or I have a theme I want to sing about. I read a lot, so it can be about that. It’s never really about what I’m feeling, but when I’m on stage, that experience has an influence and I improvise and change the words. I might be pissed off at someone in the audience, for example, so every time I sing it’s different.”

“ZOND seemed like something very abstract. They didn’t seem like a pop band, even though they have certain pop sensibilities. ZOND is like an inert substance somehow.”

Krasevac sees the indecipherable nature of the band’s lyrics as one of their strengths. “We’re influenced by a whole lot of different stuff. We’ve all been playing for a long time, so we bring a lot of different experiences to this band. Our inspirations are quite global, universal even. I listen to a lot of international music, and because they sing in different languages, it takes me somewhere which is not defined by the words they are singing. I would like to think that our music could be accessible to anyone, because we don’t communicate through words.”

Fuller agrees. “In a way our music is quite accessible. There are pop elements, but they are drenched in lava.”

Appealing to the masses is not really something high on ZOND’s agenda, says Macleod, but in a strange turn of events, the band found itself courted by two heavyweights of the avant garde, Reid and Anderson, who made their careers out of blurring the lines between art and popular culture.

ZOND were clearly chuffed at having their work validated by these veteran artists. Macleod makes the process of being selected sound like the most natural and straightforward interaction imaginable. “Nic [Warnock], who runs our label R.I.P. Society Records, is based in Sydney, where he works at a shop that sells experimental music. The event booker for the Opera House approached him to find Australian bands to feature at Noise Night. Nic gave her a copy of our album and she sent it to Lou Reed. He liked it. It’s really crazy. I’ve known and loved Lou Reed’s music ever since I can remember.”

Lou Reed’s Velvet Underground were also a formative influence on Krasevac. “‘What Goes On’ was one of the first songs I learned how to play. After ‘Wild Thing’, it was one of the easiest things to pick up.”

Likewise, Brown has an enduring appreciation for Reed’s music. “I grew up with Lou Reed songs as nursery rhymes. I don’t want to say which particular songs, because it might sound like my mother hated me as a child. It’s not just the simplicity either. Unlike most pop, Velvet Underground songs were like a glimpse into another world.”

The theme of the “other world” resonates strongly with Macleod. “We’ve been told that we seem like we come from another planet; maybe the same planet that Crispin Glover comes from. One interviewer said that there’s a sci-fi element to ZOND. There definitely is – we adore sci-fi.”

Fuller, on the other hand, is quick to distance himself from the notion that ZOND are somehow connected to a genre such as space rock. “I’m scared to say things like that, because I don’t want people to think we’re a space rock band. We’re not going to stick a spaceship on our album cover. I just hate being pinned down. I don’t like genres and I don’t like musical cliques either. We try to avoid being pigeonholed into a genre. I go nuts if one of our songs reminds me of something that’s already been done, despite the fact that it’s almost impossible to be 100 percent original.”

Brown agrees. “I hate that attitude where Australian bands think it’s OK to sound like something they’ve heard from overseas.”

Krasevac is equally keen for ZOND not to be labeled. “We don’t want to be an indie rock, punk, or metal band. We just want to be us. I grew up with an older brother who had his finger on the pulse. He made me listen to a lot of different music when we were living in Perth. When he moved to Melbourne, I was left behind in keeping up with what was happening musically. I really feel quite isolated from a lot of music that is happening these days.”

“That’s a conscious decision though,” Brown points out.

“Absolutely,” Krasevac replies, “but when I’m playing drums in ZOND now, I don’t like to think about what is happening around me. Space probably isn’t that bad an analogy, because playing music is quite a meditative state for me. I think about the vastness of space, about how full, yet also empty it is.”

The concept of separateness also looms large in ZOND’s collective mindset. As a unit, they are without peers. This is evident in their suspicion of the lifestyle trappings of the music scene, their fear of being compared to other bands and the almost anonymous look of their packaging and posters. It all adds up to a desire to shift attention away from the band as individual personalities and concentrate solely on the music.

For Macleod, this pared-back approach has a direct bearing on her musicianship. “We are very minimal and we focus on the sound, rather than complex themes. We are always trying to cut back on things in the music, trying not to over play. I don’t practice playing guitar for that reason. I want that excitement to exist when we play together. I’m self-taught and I try not to be affected by other musicians.”

“I play music every day, but I haven’t progressed technically at all,” adds Fuller. “I think there’s something wrong with me. Sometimes I wish I could play like Hendrix.” But Brown isn’t so sure. “Limitations are quite good in a way, especially when you break through them by accident.”

Macleod thinks so too. “I usually like bands’ first albums the best, because so many musicians end up disappointing me when they become more professional and skilled. Often they tend to lose the raw emotion of the playing.”

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ZOND will launch their debut album at the John Curtin Hotel in Melbourne on July 31. Supports by Beaches and Snawklor.