ZONGS

ZONGS marks one of the most ambitious and collaborative albums likely to emerge from Ireland in 2022, with eight imaginative tracks featuring the vocal talents of eight different female vocalists, all bringing something unique to the musical musings of ZOiD. 

 

ZOiD is the brainchild of electronic and jazz musician, Daniel Jacobson, a stalwart of the Dublin electronic scene, whose intake of everything from techno to Bacharach over the years has ensured a vein of varied adventure runs through his music and has been unafraid to push the boundaries.

 

From his earliest influences from labels such as Warp, Rephlex, Underground Resistance and Dublin's D1 producers Donnacha Costello and Rob Rowland, ZOiD’s fertile musical imagination was inspired by techno before evolving to incorporate and write tracks that amalgamated several genres into a populated musical petri dish of new ideas and innovation. 

 

The culmination of this to date is his new release ZONGS - an eight track beat-filled odyssey that seamlessly flows with vocals from Lauren, Aoife Doyle, Dorota Konchevska, Esosa, Jenna Harris, Suzanne Savage, Seo and Miriam Ingram. From the soul and funk of ‘Static’ to the 909-driven ‘Wish You’, the percussive rhythms of ‘Sometimes’ to the Sade-esque lounge cool of ‘Looking in the Rain’, ZONGS has a little something of everything and is not easily pigeon-holed. 

 

Collaboration has featured strongly during ZOiD’s musical journey, both with fellow artists and various record labels, including Diatribe/D1, Meljoann’s Boy Scout Audio, Front End Synthetics and Dan Curtin’s Metamorphic Records.

 

According to Daniel, ”Straight after releasing Nebulous Concrete in 2018, I got the idea for the concept and name for the ZONGS album; what if I did a series of songs, each with a different singer, where the beats and the production are techno-influenced, but the structure and melodies are song-focused? The singers were a mix of people I knew from way back and the 8 songs that made it onto the album were whittled down from around 20 ideas that I worked on.

 

“With the exception of ‘Static’ with Suzanne Savage, all the vocals were recorded by the singers themselves at home, as were all the other musicians' parts from Jake Curran, Chris Engel and Kate Ellis. It was a real pleasure working on this album and collaborating with all these great musicians and engineers, and as always I learned a lot from all of them.”

 

There is a sense of mischievous playfulness that underpins ZOiD’s music, belying some intricate arrangements and clever songwriting that form the foundations of the new material. ZONGS will be launched with a live show at The Grand Social, Dublin, on Sunday April 3 with several of the featured vocalists (Miriam Ingram, Aoife Doyle, Jenna Harris and Suzanne Savage) joining ZOiD live on stage.