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06/04/09 Club NME @ The Annex New York, New York
Influences |
To be honest, "electronica" doesn't do enough to describe the band's sound, which strikes me as more sophisticated and mature, with a fusion of many musical genres punctuated by electronic textures. The opening track of Sounds of Machines, "Wait", has cool jazz flavors, while "Light of the Moon" sounded post-punk influenced. "Machine" seemed somewhat gothic and industrial. This album is really rich, and it's difficult to separate every nuance of style as there is just so much there to wade through. The press release describes them as "a throwback to a certain type of theatricality missing from today’s music scene," and that's probably the best way to put it. I think they could fit in just fine on a theatrical stage as well as a more standard rock venue.
Zigmat is fronted by Monica Rodriguez and Stephen Yonkin, who met after college but had incidentally attended the same school. Monica was already putting together a band and was looking for a bass player. The band officially launched in 2006, and Sounds of Machines is their followup to their self-titled EP. They list the Lemonheads, Massive Attack, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Brazilian Girls, Air, and Goldfrapp among their influences. They performed at SXSW just last month, which I was unable to attend. (I'm reading that the crowd's reaction was 'incredible'-- Vu, can you confirm?) The full biography I received is available at their MySpace page , which contains more reviews from the press, but I must say, you've really got to listen for yourself. I've been excited about a lot of music I've reviewed so far, but I really think Zigmat has the potential to hit it big in the mainstream. Yeah. It's that good.
Sounds of Machines can be purchased at CD Baby here in either a physical (CD) or digital format.
04/23/2009 10:10:50 ♥ jaklumen (
/ jaklumen.vox.com) ♥ zigmat.com ♥ myspace.com/zigmat
| jaklumen wrote:
Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 6:53 PM
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I got a copy of their self-titled EP today, and so made a few notes on it and more information about the group here at the WHM group.
If you're following the main W♥M blog, you may have read the review I did for Sounds of Machines. I really like this band's sound so I picked up a copy of their self-titled EP for comparison. Something I forgot to mention is that Monica Rodriguez drifts into Spanish lyrics with her singing, which is featured much more prominently in this EP. Some tracks are featured in Sounds of Machines, but feature more of this alternating Spanish and English lyrics; in fact some of the tracks are marked with "Spanglish" in parantheses.
As a result, there is a fairly strong base of Latino fans, that I can see, and this may also be partly the basis for their comparison with The Brazilian Girls.
