For several days, I have woken up with Ziúr’s voice in my head: “Now that I’m invisible/I’ll come for you harder.” The Berlin electronic artist delivers the line through a pitched-up cyborg smile on “I Vanish,” from her new album ATØ, extending the syllables the way a child might: in-vis-sib-ble. The approach is deliberate, a way to underline the underestimation—the erasure, even—to which the song’s protagonist has been subjected. The brushed-cotton tones of the lead melody echo the careful placement of Ziúr’s words, paving the way for an extremely effective earworm.
It’s by no means the only one on ATØ. For slow jam “All Lessons Unlearned,” Ziúr teams up with pop veteran Samantha Urbani, who vocally figure skates through an icy landscape of marimba and what sounds like a murmuring chorus of awed infants. “Don’t let go/I won’t do,” urges Urbani over and over, breathily stressing the bond that exists even when life separates you from a loved one. The album’s only other collaboration also yields a sticky couplet. On self-preservation anthem “F.O.E.,” which stands for “Friendship Over Ego,” New Jersey rapper Ash B calls time on an unworthy companion: “’Cause I’m picking me over us/’Cause you have broken my trust.” For extra punch, Ziúr mirrors the rasp of Ash B’s delivery in the crackle and crunch of the track’s breaking-point production.
Guest features have become the norm on producer albums in recent years, but Ziúr breaks the mold by centering her own vocals. While her discography of club-inspired releases stretches back only a handful of years, her musical sensibility has clearly been shaped by her time fronting punk bands as a teenager. “Back when I was a singer/performer,” she said in a 2018 interview, “I ran into the audience, rolled on the floor.” On ATØ, Ziúr channels that performative energy into using her voice in wildly different ways, creating a series of vivid vignettes in the process. On the seductive “Life Sick,” she is swathed in post-punk melodrama, a singer hanging off a mic stand, head bent towards the crowd. Opener “ATØ” frames her as a shadowy figure in a forest setting, issuing life lessons through a veil of mist. And while the exquisite “Laniakea” doesn’t directly feature Ziúr’s voice, the humor and pace with which she handles the lead synth is reminiscent of her intonation on “I Vanish.”
For the most part, the instrumentals are as strong as the vocal tracks, if not stronger. I can’t hear “It’s Complicated” without wanting to trace the shape of every drumbeat and marimba note with my fingers and limbs. It is deserving of many a dance routine video tribute. “Unclaim” is another highlight: A masterpiece of textural dialogue, it opens with plucked strings, makes space for digital severity, and somehow finds a way to bring the two together in a way that negates neither. If I was splitting hairs, the dancefloor-focused “Catch Me Never” and “Fancy Handbag, Broken Zipper” could both have done with some trimming for this album context. The repetition of their patterns feels somewhat stagnant compared with the expressiveness of the songwriting elsewhere.
They’re minor complaints, however, and do very little to dent the achievement of ATØ as a whole. Skillfully switching between forward momentum and deep reflection, its 11 tracks prove Ziúr to be a master storyteller. The album title, it turns out, is an artistic abbreviation of The Alliance to Take Over the World; the record, she says, was made for “people who fight for their existence, every day.” “This Record is not here to please,” she continues in the album notes, “but to disrupt & to connect us in Solidarity.” While that is a noble pursuit, ATØ requires no preamble; the album’s innovative use of space and voice, its formidable sound design, and visionary narratives are their own best advocate. Underestimate Ziúr at your peril.
Buy: Rough Trade
