If there is any group of people in the world who desire to be different, unique, or even strange, it would be safe to suggest to point your finger towards musicians. They always strive to generate something new, which leads them into two states; being rejected and booed off the stage, or being presented with a vast amount of acclaim. Usually being exclusively dissimilar doesn’t gain popularity over night, but for the likes of Nick Zammuto, he could be seeing success a lot quicker than others.
Having just left his twelve-year, New York duo, The Books, Zammuto regurgitates the set of musical skills that he has garnered from his folktronica collective experience. Opening with a jumpy fusion of phased vocal tremolos and a single-note organ, “Yay”, despite the obvious title, is rather suggestive of his transition from working in a duo to now accomplishing a solo career. This fashion diffuses into the next piece, “Groan Man, Don’t Cry”; lead by a subtly auto-tuned reverb and a freshly amplified electric guitar. Almost unnoticeably, a square-tremolo synth-pad mingles with the foreground guitar, furthermore becoming adjoined to Zammuto’s strenuous organ.
Instrumentally, Zammuto progresses throughout his 11-track debut and is boldly attentive towards dynamic experimentation. This rarity in majority of contemporary records is self-evident in “Too Late To Topologize”, as he deepens his use of the auto-tune and his utilisation of a synth-lead. This contains a constant twisting and winding pattern throughout the extract. “Weird Ceiling” is, perhaps, the track with the widest diversity of oddness. Beginning with a lo-fi Infected Mushroom minimalism, the composition weaves into something Thom Yorke would have considered a bonus-track, as it transcends into a heavy, abstract art-rock.
Though the entire 42-minute LP is an abstract and dissimilar collective of songs, like his inspirations, it also resembles a tranquil and cool, Boards of Canada ambience. The market is open to guys and girls like Nick Zammuto, but there are ambitiously naive musicians who think jumping the boundaries is a great idea to grab attention. Yeah, it is if you know you are going to be harassed by critics and music dweebs. Fortunately, Zammuto is a clever fellow who finely edges on the concept of constructive creativity and blissful imagination.
