And a rotating cast, including but not limited to: Mike Forbes Justin Lemons David Lee Price Josh McWhirter Seth Sherman Mike Maxwell Ramsey 1919 Sarah Alexander Nick Foreman Aaron Gonzalez Sinevil Jon Teague Jared Stone Ed Preisner Tara Wood Bradley Santulli Adam Kondo Spintendo Mark Church Justin Talley Josiah Miller
Influences
Surface of the Earth | Earth | AMM | Taj Mahal Travelers | NIHILIST SPASM BAND | Loren Chasse | Coelacanth | Dead C | E.A.R. | This Heat | iDi*amin | Flies Inside the Sun | Cluster | La Monte Young | Tony Conrad | Dream Syndicate | M.E.V. | Tod Dockstader/Edgard Varese/other musique concrete & early electronics | :zoviet*france: | Nurse With Wound | the wind sea & air | early Kranky | electromagnetic manifestations of lost memories | C Spencer Yeh/Burning Star Core | Rick Reed | Ohm (TX) | Vas Deferens Organization | the antichrist dream transmission sequence from John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness | Jewelled Antler | WHITEHOUSE | Meredith Monk | Wolf Eyes | Numbers on the Mast | Terry Riley | uninhibited free musics of all sorts | Stockhausen | Phill Niblock | raw voltage abuse | suburban malaise | New Weird Denton | The Watchers
Live in Austin, March 2009 - projections by Paul Baker
Part two: Live in Austin, March 2009 - projections by Paul Baker
Zanzibar Snails with Swiss sound artist Jason Kahn at the No Idea Festival in Ft. Worth, TX.
The Snails are the abstract, communal improv/drone collective/project of Nevada Hill & Michael Chamy, previously co-founders of aleatory Denton, TX combo iDi*amin, along with a rotating cast of intrepid explorers, both along for the ride and pointing the way ....^^=_=_=^^^=_=_=_=_=_=_=_+_=_+_=-_=_=_++_=__+..=.._+=_= The Snails have shared stages w/ the Silver Apples, Harvey Milk, Six Organs of Admittance, Barn Owl, Suishou no Fune, Indian Jewelry, Jason Kahn, Wooden Shjips, Greg Ginn (Black Flag), Rahdunes, Magic Lantern, Mike Tamburo, Robedoor, Monsters of Pot, Dennis Gonzalez's Yells at Eels, Future Blondes, Aidan Baker, Medio Mutante, My Education, Mugu Guymen, ST 37, Shawn David McMillen, Nick Hennies, Stumptone, Social Junk, Winters in Osaka, The Great Tyrant, Shiny Around the Edges, Nouns Group, Treewave, Daniel Francis Doyle, Venison Whirled, Finally Punk, Cue, Balmorhea, Dust Congress, AtticTed and many more .... |z..{..&} ... voted Best Noise/Avant garde in 2008 by the readers of Dallas/Denton music blog We Shot JR .... and a critic's pick for best Experimental in 2007 ...
Participated in 2009 installment of the No Idea Festival in Ft. Worth, TX alongside European sound artists Annette krebs and Jason Kahn; played a collaborative set with Kahn. In fall 2009 Snails Nevada Hill and Sarah Alexander collaborated live with Greg Ginn (Black Flag)'s Texas Corrugators.
Anonymous Dallas music fans say:
- "zanzibar snails are the most boring fucking band that ever droned on a stage. fuckin skip it."
split 7-inch with Denton's Slackbeat
Winter 2009/10
NEWEST
Journey Into Amazing Caves! CD + DVDr
Mayyrh, MYH06
Two discs, one audio, one video montage by David Lee Price with a separate Zanzibar soundtrack. LIMITED EDITION of 100, screen printed by Nevada Hill. Audio 4 tracks, 53 minutes. DVD 26 minutes-plus.
AUDIO:
An ebbing series of hypnotic fjords that whisper, banter & barter, commingle,
converge & break apart, pile up and explode.
Michael Chamy & Nevada Hill w/ guest spots from Mike Forbes, and David Lee Price, who re-imagines the epic opener in flashback form.
“At first it kinda reminded me of Xenakis’ electronic stuff or Conrad’s darker synth stuff, but then it went into this avant guitar drone jam like if Earth and AMM had a baby ….” – our friend Tiago
VIDEO
A hallucinatory montage by David Lee Price titled “Carbage Goma,” with Zanzibar Snails producing the soundtrack. The audio is taken from a live performance by a five-piece lineup feat. Price, Seth Sherman & Josh McWhirter ... a chanting, clattering cry for help giving narrative to Price’s shifty, swirling ode to the primeval takeover of a technocratic society by a battalion of mutated Hervay Villachaize clones & his pet cadre of mutant wombat larva sporting oversized women’s sunglasses.
$10 postpaid U.S.
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Vanadium Dream CDr
Organic hash-dream cornucopia
"Unexpected sounds from unexpected new friends, the drone of Zanzibar Snails is both familiar and wholly indescribable. Music made by inhuman means, an alchemy of sounds blasted and scorched, "Vanadium Dream" is a
thick radioactive depth charge to our oceanic roster of drone and trance sounds. It is an attack on the senses, staged
in three sections, a triptych of doom and resurrection. - Phantom Limb
Packaged in a beautiful 5 screen / 9 color silkscreened fold out cover by Nevada Hill, this is a looker to behold and a sounder to listen
at..." -- Phantom Limb
3 tracks/38 mins
Numbered Limited Ed. 100
OUT NOW onPhantom Limb Recordings
From the back:
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BROWN DWARF CDr
MAYYRH Records, MYH05
A power drone odyssey featuring the strings of Josh McWhirter gone Conrad, wrapped around staticky innerspace implosions. Progresses through ebbs & flows of decay and release, meditative balms and disorienting headfuck. Peppered with disembodied voices, haywire electronics, and introspective cadences. Five tracks, 35 minutes.
Deluxe digipack by Nevada Hill & David L. Price.
“Mesmerizing in a strange and alien way.” – Dead Angel
” … the music has a crackle of electricity running through it, mixing acoustic and electric instruments into a highly listenable, yet challenging, whole. – Terrascope Online
“… a mightily twisted and incredibly dense lump of sonic dough … it’s impressive how some of the key instruments – the sharply-angsted viola of Josh McWhirter for example – manage to float to the surface of this rolling planet of rich electro-acoustic swampery. – The Sound Projector
“… the listener can hear how all the disparate elements cooperate and contrast one another…maintaining a firmly free-improv experimental feel, while communicating a sense of direction and control.” – Jerry Kranitz, Aural Innovations
”Alternately distressing and soothing, Brown Dwarf is an immersive and perversely enjoyable experience.” – Jesse Hughey, Dallas Observer
“A richly compelling piece of music, suffused with nods to rock, doom, and electro acoustic improvisation, yet ultimately resulting in its own conglomeration of influences. … The rare album that crosses boundaries and at least suggests new ways to look beyond the often narrow confines of psychedelic improvised drone music.” – Eric Hardiman, Foxy Digitalis, (9 / 10)
$7 postpaid U.S.
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The KRAKKATOWIAK EP
MAYYRH Records. MYH04. 3-inch CD. 17-minute studio recording featuring David Price on percussion, handmade design by Nevada Hill and David Price. Available here or through MAYYRH.com.
"“Ah, Zanzibar Snails,” I thought, “some nice folky drone and melody”. How wrong can you be as free form noise, sax wailing, and a tendency to be atonal, leapt from the speakers. Released on 3” CD, ‘Krakkatowiak’ is an improvised dissonant delight, seventeen minutes of sonic fury in a handy package, play it loud and get lost in its difficult beauty." – Terrascope Online
"From Denton, the past home of Texas’s space rock programme, The Zanzibar Snails have emerged as one of the region’s more interesting units over the past couple of years. They appear as a quartet here, using feedback, sax, electronics and percussion to creat an extremely neat kind of racket. The feel is akin to The Dead C jamming with Paul Flaherty, and you’d have to agree, that’s a good goddamn feel." - Byron Coley, THE WIRE
Debut limited-edition CDr on MAYYRH Records
44 minutes, Recorded live at Counter Culture Vintage in Dallas
Handmade foldout screen-printed album design by Nevada Hill
Live at the Cavern in Dallas, 1/16/08 show with Six Organs of Admittance
In Zanzibar, land snails include one species of the giant land snail (Achatina reticulata) that can reach a length of more than 15 cm and the smaller ( Achatina iredalei). There are also aquatic snails belonging to the Bulinus africanus group (e.g. B. globosus and B. nasutus) that are known to act as intermediate hosts for the parasite that cause Urinary Schistosomiasis. Slugs, which are closely related to snails but have no external shells, are found in Zanzibar in wet or moist areas.
How are you, ZANZIBAR SNAILS? Haven't checked in on you lately, so I swung by to wish you a happy halloween & hope you are feeling well! Listen, I have another track up on my page, "Attack Of The Mushroom People." You can Hear it right Now, if you'd like at: www.myspace.com/psychedelicpablo adios for now! Pablo
Outlier is Sarah Ruth, Aaron Gonzalez, Mike Maxwell and much more. City Center is incredible noisy pop from NYC/Michigan (ex-His Name is Alive/Saturday Looks Good to Me). This is how my non-show-booking ass will be celebrating his birfday, too, so come make fun of me if you want.
