Clann Zú

Clann Zú

It's rare that an EP can convey so much experience and depth within a band's potential, but Clann Zú, a collaboration of Australian and Irish musicians steeped in roots of Classical, Punk, Electronica, and very much Progressive Rock, achieved something spectacular with their self-titled EP. Self-released in 2000, the four-piece collective divulged five tracks that exist as organically unique from one another as could be imagined. 

The first track, "Of Course It Is" unfolds gently with deeply colorful guitar that washes over you in an oceanic blue haze. It swirls around your ear cavities and blooms with eventually subtle accompaniment from percussion and a whirring violin in a complete three-sixty radius, building in gloriously atmospheric intensity until the crescendo makes your hairs stand on end and you melt into euphory. Nothing is rushed. Everything is allowed to unfold in its own sweet, precious time.

The plethora of instrumentation is key to the epic full bodied nature of this work. The strings are a loving ode to the power and majesty of man's symphonic tradition, which verily has an absolutely necessary role in today's music as is demonstrated. The vocals are multilingual, which lends a mystical, free roaming spirit to the work as if they refuse the boundaries that our powers-that-be have set before us. They are strong and reach Olympian, spine tingling heights, yet maintain a honey coated lacquer that make each verse, every refrain a sugary treat for the ears.

There are nods to numerous walks of worldly influence, Jazz scented percussive bursts, electronic samplings lending a varied facet to their harder leanings that nearly shout Rage Against The Machine, but fueled by Irish injustice and years of bottled angst. The work closes with a call to arms and the sampling of an activist making her denouncement known to the world: "the richest people in the world; there are less than two thousand people that control six billion...This planet belongs to all of us."

As I stated originally, I haven't been moved by five solitary tracks in this way for quite a spell of time. Clann Zú have very sadly disbanded in 2004, but we were left with this, and two full length works. Will they match up? This work was so thoroughly good, I'm actually afraid to find out.