"[We] wanted to be something that was blurry," says Zs saxophonist Alex Mincek in the liner notes to Score. That's surprising given how sharp and precise the band's music has often been. Sink your head into this engrossing 4xCD set-- a collection of their work as a sextet in the mid 2000's-- and what pins your brain are all the repetitive stabs, staccato bursts, and bullet-like beats. In other words, what saxophonist Sam Hillmer aptly calls "that pointed 'bam' sound."
Ironically, that meticulous, rapid-fire approach has helped Zs become blurry in the way Mincek intended. By bringing the sheet-music rigor of classical to avant-prog, by injecting the energy of free jazz into chamber music, and by playing horn-led mostly-instrumental tunes in rock clubs, they've smeared divisions between genres, carving out a distinct mark at the end of the musical alphabet. The results may blur lines, but they rarely sound vague-- Zs pieces are usually recognizable within seconds of an initial sax blurt, snare shot, or guitar loop.
Given that strong sonic personality, you might think the 4.5 hours of music on Score would get tedious, and that such relentlessly punchy songs could be exhausting in big doses. But having this much Zs all in once place-- there are eight records represented here, plus an hour of previously unreleased work-- makes it clear how much variety the sextet has managed to wrangle out of such a tight, disciplined approach. Just as each laser-focused song zooms in on small parts and tiny shifts, Score turns subtle differences between tracks into exciting new developments.
There's also something about listening to this much Zs that makes me less conscious of ingredients and patterns, and more able to hear it all as one flowing body of work. Take the ironically titled "I Can't Concentrate", an 11-minute piece that hammers at its cycling figures with dizzying focus. Before it's even half over, I forget about tracking each note and instead let the piece pour into my ears, as if it were a kind of inverse magic eye painting. (It helps that "I Can't Concentrate" ends with a palate-cleaning bit of wailing free jazz). That track comes from Arms, perhaps the strongest record here, but there are many other spots on Score where hard-turning loops can mash your brain into blissed mush.
If that sounds more excruciating than fun, be advised that the extra material sprinkled throughout Score adds texture and diversity, helping the band sound three-dimensional. Energetic remixes-- particularly two by Excepter's Nathan Corbin-- do part of that job. But the richest bonus comes from concert recordings. Zs have always been a phenomenal live band, often sitting in a circle and leaning into the music until their breath and sweat coats the room (Mincek himself thought of Zs as "one big muscle.") Some of the recorded evidence here-- particularly a tense version of the bubbling "Bump"-- captures that experience with impressive accuracy.
That real-life accuracy is something I've found occasionally lacking in Zs studio albums. I thought that was corrected by 2010's excellent New Slaves, but now I wonder if I wasn't wrong about these early records too, which feel infused with much more blood and guts than I remember. And the imagination in the compositions and precision in their execution gives Score a cumulative effect. That's not to say that any of these records-- except perhaps Arms-- is a masterpiece on its own. But when you take them all in together, Zs sure do sound like masters of their craft.
