• Reviews

• All
• Music
• DVDs
• Live
• Cinema
• TV
• Books
• Comic Books
• Video Games

Oct 09, 2020 Web Exclusive By Dom Gourlay

Perilously uncertain times call for purposely uncompromising sounds. So, it’s just as well that Andy Whitehurst and Andy Pidluznyj, the creative duo behind Zoom Unit, have exerted all their energies into crafting a soundtrack befitting of the times.

Zoom Unit hail from Mansfield, England, a former mining town that boasted a number of collieries in what was an industrial heartland for coal, only to see the industry decimated and gradually closed down during Margaret Thatcher and her Conservative government’s tenure throughout the 1980s. It’s this grounding that’s given Zoom Unit’s two conspirators the inspiration to make a record that sounds as if it were constructed in a forge down a mine shaft rather than the confines of a lavish recording studio.

Which is just as well because if you’re going to make a statement of intent, then why not make it feel as authentic as possible. Clocking in at just under 50 minutes in total, ZU encompasses a range of human emotions. Whether in the claustrophobic tension of “Comfort Fit” or the seven and a half minutes of menacing aquiver attributed to “Frenzy,” arguably ZU’s center point and most unsettling reverie. There’s an underlying message in every one of the nine pieces here and it’s not for the fainthearted.

The specter of Brexit looms longingly over brooding opener “Dark Continent.” Meanwhile on “Mission Springs,” a lolloping groove coupled with Andy Whitehurst’s aloof vocal sounds eerily reminiscent of New Order from their embryonic Movement period. Delve deeper and “Lost Ships” could be an East Midlands Trans-Europe Express for those unfortunate enough to find themselves commuting daily up and down the A60 motorway. The comedowns are gradual, as on “Forever in the Sun,” which has echoes of The Beta Band in its stupefied tones, but when euphoria reaches its climax, as on epic closer “Quiet Fires,” the decades of decay become a distant memory.

Having spent four decades making music in various guises down the years, most notably with post punk miserabilists New Apostles, Whitehurst and Pidluznyj might just have stumbled across their finest collection of material to date. (www.zoomunit.bandcamp.com)

Author rating: 7.5/10