Music / Bristol
Review: Too Many Zooz
Review: Too Many Zooz, Fleece
is needed now More than ever
Three years ago you’d have had to pass through the Union Square subway station in New York if you wanted to hear Too Many Zooz, but now they’re on a hot ticket tour of Europe. Two things lifted the three instrumental buskers into the big time: a video shot by a passing stranger that went viral and the resulting invitation to appear with Beyoncé at a 2016 award ceremony. Or maybe three things if you include the fact that, as performing musicians, they are pretty damn good.
Too Many Zooz doing their Yin-Yang thing
The Fleece packed to capacity through DJ Cheeba’s ‘what will he slip in next?’ warm up set, with a palpable sense of anticipation in the air that roared its welcome when the band finally emerged. Two minutes in and the front half of the crowd was dancing, urged to action by baritone sax player Leo Pellegrino’s hyperactivity on stage. For a man carrying a big heap of brasswork he’s amazingly kinetic, pacing, gyrating, shimmering and twerking from the first blast of his deep-voiced saxophone.
By contrast trumpeter Matt Doe is totally static, playing trumpet straight into a microphone with one hand while steadily keeping a drink in the other. It’s a yin-yang thing that only amplifies the sense of movement alongside him. In the shadows at the back of the stage David Parks somehow embodies both aspects, physically flailing throughout yet immobilised by the complex home-made percussion rig hung from his waist. Small wonder that by the second number his T-shirt is already sweat drenched.
The King of Sludge thrashing it out
If the flamboyant Pellegrino is the visual centre of the band then Parks – for some reason aka ‘the King of Sludge’ – is the engine of the music, whipping up a storm of dance beats, pulling things back and letting them drop again. They call the music Brasshouse and indeed it had the remorseless insistence of a thousand dance floor anthems.
The trumpet and sax exchanged lead lines and hooks, sometimes united sometimes not, and while they kept a sense of spontaneity there was always a sense of calculation about how you use music to engineer an occasion. One tune wilfully refused to gel into a groove, the brass instruments wandering over clattering woodblock and cowbell until the audience finally pleaded and the band obliged with a thunderous drop, complete with drum and bass effected sax.
They played for over an hour, non-stop, and the crowd went with them all the way, a remarkable achievement for what’s essentially an acoustic instrumental trio. They delivered great stuff that more than pleased their audience and, while it may not have been virtuoso jazz, they more than proved themselves supreme architects of musical excitement.
More jazz-driven dance action happens at Canteen on Saturday 5 August with Mansion of Snakes
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