4 out of 5

Label: Subsound Records

Produced by: Andrea Secchi (remastered by)

Tiptoeing across the years of Zu’s releases, the labels they’ve touched and contributors they’ve worked with tells quite a tale – a tale that stretches across free jazz, and weirdo rock, and outre rock, and metal; exactly the genre buzzwords you’ll read in most writeups on the band – and that tale doesn’t necessarily start with this impressively remastered demo, but it gets formalized, inclusive of the members’ theater backgrounds mentioned in the wiki bio.

To my ears, that makes the five tracks here (two of which would reappear on debut album Bromio) pretty damn accessible, though that’s admittedly “accessible” from a perspective decades past when these tracks would have been circulating in a cassette version. But even from a 1997 frame, Zu’s direct and indirect influences are much closer to the surface: particularly no-wave and post-rock, with Ruins’ instrumental rawness, Luttenbachers’ freakout jazz, Nomeansno’s stop-start bass-heavy punk and Slint’s / Dazzling Killmen’s intensity all swirling about, but synthesized through that theater background to be… well, theatrical. There’s a playfulness here, particularly on the B-side’s rather cinematic endeavors, that’s a reminder that the group would soon team-up with oddball Eugene Chadbourne for several albums, encouraging that playfulness but also pushing the group to less structured realms.

So these are a lot of fun for longtime Zu listeners, but also totally quality for those interested in any of the bands mentioned (or the ones swimming in that stream in the 90s). At the same time, this kind of comes across as “math rock with horns;” it’s not fully the ‘Zu’ sound yet, and listens as exactly what it was: a trio of incredibly smart musicians with a ton of promise, already in sync with some intentions to bust down musical barriers, but not quite aiming for any particular barrier yet.

The remastering is a little quiet, but more importantly: it’s clear, and the instruments are all defined and land, especially on headphones. Not where to start with Zu, but also not a bad place to start if you somehow stumbled across it first. And if you’re like, “this kinda sounds like other stuff in my collection…,” please check out their discography further down the road to see how much they evolved on this sound.