:GARISTA:

This is the darkest and most unsettling of all Zoviet France albums. It's also their most unhinged, and next to their first release, the most unmusical. In my books that's no bad thing because it contributes to one very original recording, despite the technology used in its execution.

'Garista' is the second 'Zoviet France' release and is a big step up in construction from the first self titled album earlier in the same year. The best word for Zoviet France at this time is 'serendipity' - where by happy accident the Lo-Fi manner in which it's recorded actually contributes to the sound in 2013.

It's probably their most abrasive album. Certainly their most completely mental, where the best way to describe it to a newcomer would be to imagine the baddie from 'Blair Witch Project' making the recording just after she's tied that guy who's tooth was found outside the tent up to a tree, and is leaping about maniacally around him shouting and screaming in his face. Confrontational and very alien.

You could be forgiven for mistaking 'Scrama Mdags' for mid term 'Throbbing Gristle'. Hugely distorted flanges of screeching objects and grizzly chopped up electric guitar are the order of the day here.

Track two - 'Moshas' has what sounds like a kids piano and bashed metallic drums that are severely echoed, along with what will be their trademark - indescribable homemade horns and flutes that sound of no earthly origin. A monstrous, deep, wolf-like wordless vocal groans in the foreground which should be enough to make you spit out your wine in a choking fit.

'Mama Piss' continues in this vocal form but is joined by other band members adding delerious ritualistic wails and moans with someone clearly finding the whole thing funny, judging by his uninhibited guffaws.

'Nruknesh' is the track where the 'Blair Witch' imigary really starts to disturb. High pitched vocal screeches and barks makes this one intense and bellicose track.

Come to think of it 'Caarcuraz' is even heavier in atmosphere with a wailing adult human sounding like an infant backed by storms of electronic noise and wind-like gadgetry that is pugnacious in nature.

'M1 M1 M1' sports what sounds like enormously stretched out car horns whilst little bells and clunking reverbed metal sheets reverberate in alarming stereo. Those wordless, growling animalistic vocals still threaten throughout like a pack of wolves, as the effects become more extreme the longer it plays.

By far the longest tune on 'Garista' is the album ender with 'Rang Mabasm', which clocks in at over 14 minutes. As always, the longer tracks seem to be where the band are most comfortable, where proceedings get to evolve at a more natural pace. The piercing vocal that shouts 'Bobo Garista' will have you mouthing the words to yourself at the most inappropriate moments afterwards. Pots, pans, sticks, vocals and weird electric warbles are all diced up willy-nilly as things get ever more frantic and maniacal the longer it progresses. Some mental bloke starts giving it hell-for-leather with two minutes to go as the chopped percussion and drums go into overdrive in what is surprisingly the most cohesive track on the album.

What is probably the most tuneless recording in the entire 'Prog Archive' holds a special place in my heart. These guys were clearly 'away with the bees' whilst recording this noisy monstrosity. Overall, it has stood the test of time where in a world three decades ago a new branch of music originated in Britain - 'Post Industrial'. It won't appeal to many, especially Genesis and Yes fans, but this means far more to me than the aforementioned.

ZOVIET FRANCE (also known as :$OVIET:FRANCE:, Soviet France, :Zoviet-France:) was one of the early second wave industrial ambient bands following in the footsteps of Throbbing Gristle, Nurse With Wound and Einstürzende Neubauten and has been active for over four decades now. Formed in Newcastle Upon Tyne in 1980 by Ben Ponton, Peter Jensen and Robin Storey, ZOVIET FRANCE has remained a bizarre musical force that blurs the distinctions between industrial, ambient, drone, noise and musique concrète and remains a mysterious underground act despite releasing well over 20 albums to date.

It all started with the act's 1980 cassette release GARISTA which at the time found :$OVET:FRANCE: as the moniker of choice. Originally self-released, the album would eventually find other labels to reissue it on CD and vinyl. The band was one of those strange entities that participated in the underground tape scene and found its earliest cassette released wrapped in materials such as hessian, tar paper and aluminum foil. The group's musical proclivities were just as unorthodox by delivering bizarre hypnotic collages of sound that blended droning with vocal samples, field recordings, reverberating sound effects, tribal percussion and electronic sounds.

This abstract and surreal debut featured seven tracks that offered an otherworldly wild ride that clamored on for nearly 40 minutes. Even on their first offering ZOVIET FRANCE featured a sort of audio version of surrealist automatism where the artists suppress conscious control over the creative process and allow the unconscious mind to take the lead. While many industrial artists simply delivered repetitive cyclical loops of sound or even melodic touches, GARISTA is bound together only by a series of rhythmic pulses and somewhat of the electronic equivalent of the no wave movement that was sweeping New York City at the same time.

The album is unpredictable and unorthodox in about every way and as alienating as early Throbbing Gristle, Nurse Without Wound or Nocturnal Emissions. In other words this is about as avant-garde as you can get as the procession of dark ominous noisy sound effects consistently shape shift and deliver the musical equivalent of the inner workings of a complex machine going completely haywire. The album does deliver odd percussive and rhythmic counterpoints though as if several streams of consciousness intersected or like when two radio stations bleed into each other on a classic FM radio dial. Vocals occur but only strange utterances with no meaning. While ZOVIET FRANCE would add more elements of musicality to their repertoire, GARISTA shows the band at their darkest and most determined to divorce their "music" from anything else in existence.

For all intents and purposes this will come off as pure noise to most music lovers. This is basically designed for only the most hardcore of extremists who can appreciate many layers of incongruous streams of sound overlapping and derailing without notice. It's almost like a bunch of toddlers starting a band with a bunch of found objects in the kitchen and having a field day with it all. Well perhaps a bit more sophisticated than that but delivers the same chaotic effect. Call me crazy but i actually love these totally irreverent freak-a-zoid sound expressions if done well and this one works for me nicely.

Zoviet France (stylized as :$oviet:France: for this release) is a long running Industrial/Ambient group from England, various members have come and gone, the one constant being Ben Ponton. On :Garista: $F are Ben Ponton, Peter Jensen, and Robin Storey (who would later leave $F and carry on solo as Rapoon). We find our merry trio in full out hobgoblin mode for this release; no structured music here, no notion of normalcy, everything is indeterminant. Not content with just sounding like drunken heathens, this aesthete and esotericism extends even to the packaging of their releases. The original cassette release is a hand cut cloth J-card slathered in petrol or creosote. If you'd come across this while out for a walk in the woods you'd think the orcs from LOTR were about, doubly if you chose to listen to it.

The first side features a handful of short excursions, though really making distinctions is pointless I will still attempt some guidance, starting with Scrama Mdags (as far as I'm aware this and all the other song and album names don't mean anything to humans). Odd synthetic, bouncing rubber band-like electronics rollick along to scratchy, tape mucked, background howling; abruptly we cut into Mosbas, a completely unstructured mess of random sounds. Something that sounds like an effects ladened horn whispers and blares away, odd echoed banging sounds, a cheap organ blurts randomly in the background; it's all kept fairly sparse, allowing for lots of space. Vocals eventually butt in, groaning and moaning under some tape effects, sounding pitch shifted. At some point we've rolled into Mama Piss (okay I guess one song title does mean something to humans), vocals sounding like someone washing their mouth, gurgling some water. More voices join in, laughing and making random EEHHHH, AHHH, WAAHHOO and OOHHH sounds, going on far longer than I want to listen. If there was any question of how serious this group was at this point you've had that answered now.

We get our first semblance of articulate music, hobgoblins can evolve. A dirty, thunky, rubbery bass line barges in, syncing up with the treated vocals, while the rest continue to hoop and holler. We enter Nruknesh, even more unhinged treated vocal performances accompanied by bottomed out, bass heavy droning and thumping. Sounds like some tribal ritual performed next an industrial refrigerator or air conditioning unit. Caarcuraz continues the un- normalcy with some viscous, swirled electronics and voice, chanting incessantly along eeeEHHHHeeeeeEEHHHH. Layers of uncanny, deep chanting and chittery-chattery voices and chirping, cracked electronics are thrown into this tape degradation party.

The two longer 'songs' are quarantined on side two, starting with M1 M1 M1, this has no exits unlike the motorway, buckle up asshole. We're back to Mosbas, drawn out soundscaping with random bangs, treated vocal ululations, horn and organ (if that's what they are, idk I'm guessing folks). Tape hiss so loud it qualifies as a fourth participant. I wouldn't be surprised if this is the same session chopped into separate parcels. This meanders on with no conclusion or goal in sight, at some point the sound drops out WHO KNOCKED OVER THE FOUR TRACK GODDAMNIT. Of course we continue on in a couple seconds unabated. The lack of progression serves towards making it sound like you're living in fairytale fantasyland, living in a mud hut clutching your sheepskin blanket while listening to a neighboring village being pillaged and razed by a band of trolls and goblins. While the gloam settles, you hope they don't fancy a long night of destruction. Eventually the track simply ends. We enter the final stretch with the longest offering Rangmabasm. Similar to Mosbas and M1 M1 M1 this session makes use of silence and space, even more so than the two aforementioned, making for an even more spaced out and nebulous listen, and plenty of silently, snakey hissing tape. Reverbed clangs of all manner of pots, pans, sticks, stones, buckets, buckets of kitchen utensils, trashcans; rubbery, stretchy electronics whump, warp, and warble heavily and loudly; forlorn callings of horns and inhuman wails from out of the tape hiss abyss. Occasionally an industrial rhythm of trashcan beating and synthetic humming will form, bottoming out in noisy cacophony before disseminating. Eventually we do settle and morph into some tribal, ritualistic groove of synth and various percussion. A dance around the firelight. It gathers and ends toward an upsurge into the abyss, I presume whatever universe this was recorded in apocalyptically ended. There is light however, we did get our first sign of human intelligence in the form of articulate words, 'he's bobogarista'! That's only one articulate word actually, but a phrase to live by nonetheless, 'he's bobogarista' cause aren't we all?

In conclusion this is perfect for whatever next church function you're attending that needs some music.