- Melbourne's NO ZU has just released an EP via Cut Copy's label, Cutters, not that long after a full-length release came out on Michael Ozone's Home Loan label. The large ensemble is headed by Nicolaas Oogjes, who also released an EP called Built as the duo STATUE with Tom Gould of World's End Press on Cutters, earlier this year. While his solo outings are electrically focused, NO ZU’s percussive dance music relies on free interchange between its various members. This loose approach reminds one of Konk or Allez Allez - funk basslines meeting a DIY punk ethos.

Lead single and the title track to the Hi Gloss EP has all the tropes you’d expect from a disco song – a repetitive vocal refrain, slap bass, horns, fake strings, cowbell, and themes of luxury and glamour. It doesn’t sound like disco though, more like a dub mix of Palais Schaumburg. Hi Hypnomania is a stomper with (mostly unintelligible) spoken lyrics over swinging bass, typically housey timbres making it -perhaps ironically- something more akin to a disco jam.

Do Deep Dee (NYC Late Night Jam) (my pick of the lot) is a collaboration with Liquid Liquid vocalist Sal Principato. Recorded at an early morning kick-on in NYC. This track features thumping three note bass and Sal P.’s instantly recognizable voice. Sal spent two weeks in Australia earlier this year, playing with NO ZU at the Sugar Mountain Festival and a “Heat Beat Party” in Sydney. Interestingly, he likens the band to Pig Bag, although both he and Oogjes believe influences are not so direct, having more to do with setting and other subconscious faculties.

Regardless, it seems like a fairly clear nod to Liquid Liquid, whom Oogjes says were significant to NO ZU in the beginning, stating: “It is particularly exciting to put something to tape that features Sal after our on-going live collaborations with him and with Liquid Liquid being one of our biggest early influences… [S]ince I began NO ZU in 2007, Liquid Liquid inspired me, as just a drummer and percussionist, that I could create music simply from intuitive feelings of mood and atmosphere despite my limitations musically”. For me Do Deep Dee is the grooviest number on the EP, with a timeless quality from sounding both old and contemporary. The EP finishes with Moon B’s remix of Ui Yia Uia, who turns the song into a funky-electrified dub.

NO ZU’s brand of repetitive, percussion-heavy funk becomes more realised with every release. Hi Gloss is another progression in their self-coined ‘Heat Beat’ sound, bringing in heavy-hitters from the old guard to spice things up. Australia’s foremost dance-anomaly, look out for the upcoming release of their second LP Afterlife, due out early in 2016 through Chapter Music

- Hill Folk.