J.Zunz & guests

Fantome & Rough Trade Bristol present

J Zunz & guests
Thursday 7th July - 7.30pm
£5 adv

At the fourth(?) time of trying, we finally have the incredible J.Zunz coming to Rough Trade Bristol. With a new album coming via Rocket recordings, join us for the Bristol leg of her headline tour. Sonically, expect syncopated synths, crescendos that will vibrate your brain and a hypnotic pulsing dance floor.

Lorena Quintanilla’s journey as J. Zunz continues with her
third solo release, and her second for Rocket Recordings after
2020’s ‘Hibiscus’. Recorded in a vociferously windy area of
Enseneda, Mexico, where Lorena spent a strict lockdown,
‘Del Aire’ exorcises the troubles she encountered during the
period, in the process creating both what she describes as a
“continuity and discontinuity” from ‘Hibiscus’, and extracting
a similar, yet fresh strain of emotional complexity.
With the atmospheric and natural theme of air at the heart of
the creative process, Lorena has created an extraordinarily
spacious work. The synths of ‘Lineal’ thrive on pulse-like
repetition, gathering from a luscious sweeping panorama into
a bruising orchestral crescendo. Elsewhere, as on ‘Del Aire’
the discordant-meets-melodic sonics dwell somewhere
adjacent to Gazelle Twin. Both Lorena’s vocals and her
distinctive crystalline avant aesthetic are writ large throughout
the reverberations of ‘Cruce’ and ‘Horizonte’ as well as on
the anxiety-rending exhortations closing the surreally
meditative ‘Outsides’.
Parts beautifully reflects organic instrumentation through
Lorena’s electronic prism. ‘Ráfaga’, meanwhile, sees caustic
drums enact glitchy, stop-start rhythms. Here, and on the
hypnotic ‘Nina’, Lorena gilds the narcotic power of Miles
Davis’s ‘On The Corner’ – with trumpet recorded by Freddie
Murphy (Father Murphy) – into electronically contorted shapes.
Through the mellifluous repetition, the cathartic buzzsaw
moments and the elemental force of the album’s conceptual
core, ‘Del Aire’ acts as an intimate echo chamber vicariously
healing the listener’s wounds besides Lorena’s own.