Reviews:

From Blow Up: (by Paolo Bertoni)

  Boyd Rice alla voce, Z’EV alle percussioni. Null’altro in questo 12” senza titoli, un brano per facciata, solo vinile. Potrebbe essere occasione per inscenare un sabba di furibonda, o marziale, percussività a spalleggiare gli ideologici recitati di Boyd, ma Z’EV non sembra percuota né Rice declama, con assenza di qualunque accenno ritmico, così come confusa nel magma è la voce di Rice, assolutamente impercettibile.

  I due lunghi episodi si svelano così terrifiche correnti dark ambient di ferrea prestanza industriale, con il pezzo sulla facciata a 33 che offre un quarto d’ora abbondante speso tra masse di rumore impermeabile che avanzano implacabili e lamentosi stridii metallici dalle caustiche proprietà che singhiozzano, e quello sulla side a 45 che spinge ancor più verso una sprezzante rigidità old school che conduce in disagevoli soundscape in cui sembrano infiltrarsi famelici respiri di lupi che scendono a valle in cerca di prede. E vien da pensare non casuale che il vinile, trasparente, sia color rosso sangue. (8)

From Heathen Harvest: (by Drengskap)

  Boyd Rice and Z’EV both have careers stretching back into the 1970s and the earliest days of what’s now generally known as the industrial music scene. Boyd Rice is best known for his solo project NON and its confrontational blend of harsh noise, occult fascist aesthetics and social Darwinist themes, although his collaborations during the 1990s with other musicians like Douglas P. of Death In June and Albin Julius of Der Blutharsch are also noteworthy. Z’EV has made numerous solo releases of metal percussion and ambient electronics, and has worked with artists including Psychic TV, Organum, KK Null, Oren Ambarchi, Sunn 0))) and Hati. Z’EV and Boyd Rice have also known each other for over 30 years, since they were both living in California, yet remarkably this is the first time they have recorded together.

  I interviewed Z’EV for Judas Kiss webzine in November 2007, and he spoke at length about this collaboration, which resulted in an album’s worth of material, which is due to be released on Mute Records in 2009, as well as this 1000-copy limited edition 12” EP."What this project started out as was, I was wanting it to be a vinyl project, and so it was 12 pieces of between two and three minutes long… I wanted to go more for a kind of pop format, with short songs, for a couple of reasons. One, it has to do with both of our backgrounds, growing up with pop music on the AM radio. Also, I thought that would be the last thing anyone would expect from us! You know, if Boyd and Z’EV were ever going to do something, people would expect that it would be either one long piece or a bunch of long pieces. We first started discussing working together in 2003, when I first got back to doing stuff, and was contacting people about doing collaborations… Then in 2006, I was in LA again, during the summer, and Boyd was coming to town… finally we got together. He came over to where I was staying and I recorded him… There’s a particular thing that he does, a private thing that he doesn’t do in performance, but that I knew about. He kind of sings to himself, based on particular songs. The plan was that he would give me the source, and I would do something with it. "

  This vinyl EP features two untitled tracks. One side plays at 45 rpm, and the other side plays at 33 rpm, with the two sides clocking in at around eight and 16 minutes respectively. Both sides feature vocals by Boyd and percussion by Z’EV, with the source recordings having been subjected to extensive post-production treatment by Z’EV. Although the sound sources used here are vocals and percussion, it would really be impossible to know this without being told – Z’EV’s treatments of time and pitch shifting, distortion and stretching have radically transformed the source material into a dense, churning mass of textured drones and abstract noise, with shimmering metallic tones swooping and falling, interspersed with low rumbles which could conceivably be derived from a human voice slowed down way beyond the point of comprehensibility. Anyone expecting to hear something like NON’s ‘Total War’-era works of martial rhythms and stridently declaimed rhetoric will be disappointed – this record is much more akin to NON’s earlier pure noise pieces like Pagan Muzak and Rise. In terms of Z’EV’s work, this is quite similar to his collaborative releases with Hati and Stephen O’Malley of Sunn 0))), both of which involved his collaborators creating source material which Z’EV then treated in this way.

  Z’EV has released quite a bit of material, both solo works and collaborations, since his return to the music scene a few years back, but it’s particularly interesting to hear some new material from Boyd Rice, who seemed to have more or less retired from making music. The last new NON album was 2002’s Children Of The Black Sun, although there was the Terra Incognita compilation album in 2004. But this record was shortly preceded by another limited-edition vinyl release, the Going Steady With Peggy Moffitt EP by Giddle & Boyd, and Standing In Two Circles, a book of the collected writings of Boyd Rice, has just been published by Creation Books. So maybe we haven’t heard the last of the man from NON just yet.

  The Boyd Rice and Z’EV 12” is pressed on heavyweight marbled red vinyl, and the black and white sleeve features photography by Boyd on one side and a yantra sigil drawn by Z’EV on the other.