Zombie Zombie Fact preview: Schlock horror

A Fact preview of this fantastic Kosmische-horror band from 2008's early thaw:

If there's a colder moment that that bit on Assault On Precinct 13 when the kid’s song turns into John Carpenter’s keyboard line as a sniper looks through the sights, I've yet to see it. Funnily enough, Zombie Zombie have turned it into a band. They turn slasher stories and horror movies into slow-Can-inflected-disco jam epics. Less a side-project than a juvenile obsession, the duo formed around the studio spaces of Paris in the first half of this decade, fascinated equally by the horror films of Dario Argento and their Goblin soundtracks. “The music that soundtracks these films is so atmospheric. It is about creating a physical reaction as much as it is about the sounds themselves,” says the improbably titled drummer and soundsmith, Cosmic Neman, who makes the music with Etienne Jaumet, a free-jazz saxophonist, sound engineer and electronic handyman by day. Live, they are joined by Romain Turzi, Jay from Friction and David Ivar.
The pair’s rise has been pretty spectacular. Originally “something fun to do at parties”, they were snapped up by Parisian electro heartland Versatile after releasing an EP on Boomboomtchak. Last summer they were first on the bill at The End Of The Road, this month they opened for the Silver Apples at their reunion show in Paris, and well as guesting on Allez Allez and Le Blogotheque. Whether the band’s involvement with cardigan-rock heroes Herman Düne (Neman bangs their drums as well) has oiled their wheels is anyone’s guess – Neman is loath to see this band as a side project, saying “this is just fun, but so is Herman Düne. Different kinds of fun” – but some of the antifolk band has rubbed off on ZZ.
Firstly, there’s the commitment to obsolete instruments: “We use hardly anything made after 1980. With computer programs, you can do anything, so you end up playing them. With an old synthesizer, they are so temperamental that they end up playing you.” Then there’s the impressive commitment to misinformation and mythmaking: rumours of unnatural phenomena – walls have reportedly bled and strange marks have appeared on people’s bodies at their gigs – are neither confirmed nor denied.
Debut album A Land For Renegades was conceived as the soundtrack to an imaginary road movie about two mercenaries racing against the night, hounded by unseen forces. Apart from a rather daft track about a “nightclub where Iggy Pop and David Bowie’s ghosts are performing”, it’s a brilliant conception – while bits wouldn’t sound out of place on Italians Do It Better, it’s more soundstage than Studio Five-Four. As well as John Carpenter and Goblin, there’s bits of Popul Vuh’s stuff for Herzog. There’s a definite shade of Suicide’s more cinematic moments in the mix – with whom they share an absolute will to fuck us up. “To make you feel, I drum like a heartbeat. There are screams and pacings on the record. I want us to sound like fun, but fun that is so close you can feel it, you can smell it, so it makes you jump.”