Iva Lirma remastered

Iva Lirma

Thierry Zaboitzeff, one-time bassist and cellist, and, together with Gerard Hourbette, the creative force behind Art Zoyd, opens his archives. The Belgian’s new album has just been released (autumn 2007) by Spanish label Margen Records, where last year his cd debut came out. The new cd is subtitled ‘Archives 02-07’. ‘Iva Lirma’ contains 12 pieces which Zaboitzeff composed between 2002 and 2007. Each of them originally accompanied various dance theater performances by Edittta Braun such as ‘Luvos vol. 2’, ‘Manifest’, ‘oXalis’, ‘Matches of Time’ and ‘Coppercity’.
Those familiar with Zaboitzeff’s and Art Zoyd’s music won’t be surprised by what they find on ‘Iva Lirma’. The Frenchman creates with bass, cello, guitars, trumpets, various keyboards, percussion, assorted samples and electronic sounds dense, mostly sinister and threatening soundscapes, which flow out of the boxes in a sustained to very rhythmic way. Once again Zaboitzeff produces weird and hard-edged music. Compared to ‘Mïssa Furïosa’ or ‘Dr. Zab Vol. 2’, this cd presents more avantgarde and complex, if not complicated, compositions. The whole is simply more sparse and electronic, although now and again cello and bass dominate and define the sound.
Very rhythmic numbers (like the introductory ‘Matches of Time’), where Zaboitzeff thankfully abstained from the dancebeats which used to appear now and again, meet with threateningly sultry, dense sound waves, sustained ethno electronic and real Kammerprog, which occasionally reminds us of colleagues from Univers Zero and Present (listen to the second half of ‘Luvos vol. 2 Epilogue’). Zaboitzeff sings now and again, scratchy and rough as usual. The title song captivates with a hypnotically sinister refrain which bores itself into your brain. In the final ‘Crash’ Zaboitzeff sounds like Apocalyptica. Several cello grooves rock, accompanied dynamically by well-programmed percussion and brings the album to an almost hymnic end.
Zaboitzeff doesn’t necessarily offer anything new on ‘Iva Lirma’, but what he presents here is of good quality and interesting enough to be recommended by Electro-RIO-Avantgardists. Compared to his ex-colleagues from Art Zoyd, who are moving more and more onto contemporary-classic terrain, Zaboitzeff’s sound creations are clearly more lightweight and transparent. This may please the Proh listeners among us, who like more weird and complex music without going overboard.

Achim Breiling