“Drummer/composer Steve Harris surfaced in the 1980s with the highly original UK jazz and free-funk band Pinski Zoo, but his ventures with Zaum are much more abstract - Harris himself has said of this album: “The last thing I wanted it to sound like was the perceived notion of jazz, or anything else for that matter.” Perceived notions certainly only appear here in fleeting glimpses, and almost always on the way to becoming something else - the jazziest element comes from Geoff Hearn’s Coltrane-to-Garbarek sax, which sometimes makes a late entry into abstract collective passages and wrenches both them and Harris’s inspired ensemble-rooted drumming into new directions. Pattering brushwork scurries on under long electric viola sounds and doodling clarinet lines; squeezed sounds like reversed tapes, squeezebox effects like abstract folk music, or gothic vocal laments drift over edgy electric guitars or deep, wind-in-chimneys keyboard notes. But for all the absence of easy hooks of any kind, this is very superior non-idiomatic contemporary music that almost never treads water and promises a surprise around every corner.” – JOHN FORDHAM, THE GUARDIAN
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‘A is for Ox’ is regrettably the last album from ZAUM featuring the group’s founder member Steve Harris who died in January 2008. It is a culmination of performances by ZAUM over a two year period which Steve was particularly keen to make available and endorses ZAUM at the pinnacle of improvised music.
‘Live at Brighton’, a bonus CD, features the last full performance by Steve Harris and ZAUM in October 2007 and is a fitting tribute not only to the man but also his passion for the group he launched.
“For all the absence of easy hooks of any kind, this is very superior, non-idiomatic, contemporary music that almost never treads water and promises a surprise around every corner” - John Fordham, The Guardian
“It’s quite simply the best British improvised record in more than a decade…”
– BRIAN MORTON, THE WIRE
“Zaum have been making a name as one of the most original and exciting free-music projects in the world. On the strength of their fourth album, it’s a richly deserved reputation.”
– Jazzwise