Posted on: January 28, 2010 Posted by: anfnewsacct Comments: 0

ATP recently announced four Thee Silver Mount Zion Orchestra shows in the UK and now we are able to announce an entire UK tour. This is the first time that they have done a large UK tour since 2007 and it falls in line with the release of their sixth studio album Kollaps Tradixionales. It is also the first time that they will be playing the new album since it was recorded, needless to say we want to shout about it from the rooftops. The band will be touring as the new line up Efrim Menuck, David Payant, Jessica Moss, Sophie Trudeau and Thierry Amar and this is how the tour is looking…

16 March BRISTOL, Fleece
17 March BIRMINGHAM, Asylum
18 March DUBLIN, The Button Factory
19 March GLASGOW, School Of Art
21 March MANCHESTER, Academy 3
22 March LEEDS, TJ’s Woodhouse Social Club
23 March LONDON, Electric Ballroom
24 March NOTTINGHAM, Rescue Rooms
25 March SHEFFIELD, Corporation
26 March OXFORD, The Regal
27 March BRIGHTON, St George Church

For a taste of what’s to come…on the new album, the band has lost none of its raw and frazzled anthemic power and continues to forge bold new ground in its search for a unique hybrid of punk, blues, psych, folk and modern orchestral idioms. Anchored by the fried electric guitar and plangent voice of band leader Efrim Menuck (who previously co-founded Godspeed You! Black Emperor) SMZ continues to slide comfortably and unforcedly towards an expansive, loose and blues-inflected balladry – not so much the inexorably riffing blues shuffle of the title track from its previous effort, 13 Blues For Thirteen Moons, but a more languid waltz-time marking an almost smouldering dynamic arc.

With Efrim now the lone guitarist, his shattered oscillating tone and staggered snarling leads collide against one another, framed by a swirling widescreen backdrop of dual violins, courtesy Sophie Trudeau and Jessica Moss. Their playing is in ways more classically orchestral than ever in many places on Kollaps Tradixionales, serving up arpeggiated runs and modernist strokes that counterbalance and destabilize the more conventional progressions at the core of any given song or movement. Thierry Amar’s upright bass work as always plays a similar role, fluidly moving from harmonic anchor to counterpoint to adventurous extrapolation, displaying this player’s fluency and alliance with free jazz, improv and out music. The way all these strings push and pull, with their own multiplicity of influences, against those punk rock ‘lektrik guitars has long been one of SMZ’s crucial and inimitable strengths. It is on fine display in many exciting new guises on the new album, and the band’s freshest member, drummer David Payant, does a wonderful job playing into and off of this heady brew.

Don’t forget you can stream/download a track from the band’s newly launched blog: www.tra-la-la-band.com/ and we hope to have more news of more free music and a video in the coming weeks.

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