THE NEW DOUBLE ALBUM
(AMAZCD18)
‘A IS FOR OX’
OUT NOW ON AMAZON RECORDS AND DOWNLOAD WITH 
INCLUDES THE BONUS CD ‘LIVE IN BRIGHTON’ IN SPECIAL
EDITION DOUBLE CD GATEFOLD DIGI PAK
A Is For Ox – Live in Brighton
‘Wake the Angles’
A Is For Ox – Live Recordings
‘Lets Cool One’ (Lighthouse, Poole)
‘A is for Ox’ is regrettably the last album from ZAUM featuring the group’s founder member Steve Harris who died in January 2008. It is a culmination of performances by ZAUM over a two year period which Steve was particularly keen to make available and endorses ZAUM at the pinnacle of improvised music.
‘Live at Brighton’, a bonus CD, features the last full performance by Steve Harris and ZAUM in October 2007 and is a fitting tribute not only to the man but also his passion for the group he launched.
“For all the absence of easy hooks of any kind, this is very superior, non-idiomatic, contemporary music that almost never treads water and promises a surprise around every corner” – John Fordham, The Guardian
“Drummer/composer Steve Harris surfaced in the 1980s with the highly original UK jazz and free-funk band Pinski Zoo, but his ventures with Zaum are much more abstract – Harris himself has said of this album: “The last thing I wanted it to sound like was the perceived notion of jazz, or anything else for that matter.” Perceived notions certainly only appear here in fleeting glimpses, and almost always on the way to becoming something else – the jazziest element comes from Geoff Hearn’s Coltrane-to-Garbarek sax, which sometimes makes a late entry into abstract collective passages and wrenches both them and Harris’s inspired ensemble-rooted drumming into new directions. Pattering brushwork scurries on under long electric viola sounds and doodling clarinet lines; squeezed sounds like reversed tapes, squeezebox effects like abstract folk music, or gothic vocal laments drift over edgy electric guitars or deep, wind-in-chimneys keyboard notes. But for all the absence of easy hooks of any kind, this is very superior non-idiomatic contemporary music that almost never treads water and promises a surprise around every corner.”
“magisterially evolving grooves, with dovetailed instrumental entries and staggered cadence points…it’s a liberated and vibrant sound, and representative of ZAUM at its best”
Philip Clark – The Wire
“total disregard for musical genre and an almost total open-mindedness for musical possibilities”
“the music is improvised, creative, with a sweet and accessible touch, yet fully exploratory of space, moods and sounds”
“the major strength of this band is its unique sound and its capacity to improvise fully coherent musical pieces that sound preconceived, structured”
“the music can change from almost classical moments over King Crimson, jazz and avant-garde – a highly unusual cocktail, but one that is wonderfully intense and cohesive and adds to the overall magnificence of the recording”
“It is an extraordinary collective achievement. A wonderful album to remember Steve Harris”
Free Jazz – 5/5
“Zaum’s work is the most profound step forward in the language of improvisation since the awkward twin birth of “free jazz” and “free music”
“consciously an attempt to devise a new, “guttural” musical language that reflects contemporary cultural realities and psychologies without having to use the (arguably) outdated jazz idiom to do so”
“newcomers to Zaum will be conscious of a darkly evolving sound, music as mass and presence rather than as line and which seems to balance an orchestral richness of texture with the visceral immediacy of a rock concert”
“Zaum’s music proposes and questions. It asks how we make music together and to a degree why we make music together. Zaum performances have elements of ritual and transcendence, but also an earthy physicality”
“I’ve never played anyone, jazz fan or not, a piece by Zaum without a positive reaction”
“It will make you think differently about all other music”
Brian Morton – The Tablet