No Zu / Body2Body / Chapter Music

The 16-legged Melbourne-based ♂♀ Heat Beat™ collective, No Zu, are celebrating a birthday. Ten years of blowing carnival whistles. Banging on drums, keys, car horns, cowbell, and anything else that comes to hand and sounds good. The festivities marked with a new 12 and a European tour. My previous reviews of the band referenced Punk-Funker`s, The Contortions and Liquid Liquid. No Zu having collaborated with the latter`s Sal Principato. The new record pulls in remixes from two more seminal 1980s Agit-Dance acts. Manchester`s A Certain Ratio (a hook up orchestrated by Aficionado`s Jason Boardman) take the tribal, Deep House-inspired groove of Body2Body and make it throw angular shapes. Cutting in samples from their own Do The Du. Adding bass, power chords, wah-wah licks, and a snarling 303. Then Jonny Sender, of NYC`s Konk, basically turns Spirit Beat into Konk. Slapping that bass and whacking that cowbell. Putting it up there with Konk classics, Love Attack and Your Life. No Zu`s own remixes of the tracks also tighten their sound. All of the mixes beefing-up the No Zu of the past. Yet still retaining the band`s unique live exuberance and energy. Making the record, in my opinion, their strongest to date.

For me, Dance Floor Balearic, is all about this combination of machines and Latin / Afro percussion.