4 out of 5

Label: Zum

Produced by: George Chen

25 years on, and the lil’ zine that could still thrives as an arthouse label of sorts, working with a very curated roster and releasing at a comfortable pace, blessing us randomly and periodically with these compilation reminders of how deep their bench of talented friends is…

Volume 5 hits 26 tracks – shy of volume 4’s 30+, but there’s plenty here – and, as these comps have before proven, steps impressively seamlessly through quite a range of styles, from various indie rock formats to experimental to electro, with some touches of jazz and noise and even some black metal, ’cause why not.

The magic sauce with the Zum comps is the care taken in sequencing, which bears in mind the full listening experience: grabbing us with beats and pop at the outset, and shushing us from quiet to loud and everything inbetween, even remaining aware of giving Disc 1 something of an ending – the clattering work of Rắn Cạp Đuôi – and Disc 2 a bombastic beginning, with the shoegazey sludge of My Heart, an Inverted Flame. It’s not easy bringing improv skronk jazz together with ambient or metal, but these comps manage it, and Zum’s roster is broader than ever at this point – if those descriptions are not already indicative – making how listenable this set is (and how listenable it makes some cuts which, on an album exclusively of their like, may be less tolerable). But buyer beware: assuming you’re open to the type of genre variation Zum favors, you’ll be spending more money on albums from several of the featured artists.

But, of course, having so much music can have a bit of a downside: that it’s so much music. I think it takes a while to ingest all of Zum Audio, as a lot of this stuff is firstly pretty dense, and also pretty oblique. I reserve the right to retcon this statement, but I think this set probably favors the most percentage of outre artists of any of the Zum comps, meaning a good chunk of the tracks are pretty open-ended. Some of these are smartly excerpts, but with ambient / noise music especially I think compilations can be difficult to absorb and determine exact differences between one band or track versus another. Now, again, Zum-er George Chen does right by the listener, and compiles this stuff in probably the most ideal way possible to milk a unique experience from each song, but they’re simply not all “singles.” Then again, the relative accessibility of this thing means I’ll have plenty of time to dig in and appreciate whatever I’ve missed.

Full details on the bands (and sometimes lyrics!) can be found on bandcamp / the Zum site; it’d be nice to get links to or info where we can buy more, or any origin of these songs – the credits are oddly spotty – but we can also suppose some of these are one-offs, just for this comp. And the design is pretty funky. Regardless, 26 tracks, lots of wild stuff, and lot of that that I can’t wait to follow through their own rabbit holes.