Zru Vogue

Club Zru / Galerie Zru

Riding the highs of their new solo albums, Andrew Jackson and Rick Cuevas of Zru Vogue deliver this spectacular double album. The discs sandwich the insuppressible energy and the bottomless font of creativity that is Zru. 

They have included new music (how great is Consenting Adults?), developed partially formed demos, and re-recorded some Zru classics. Why redo perfection? Because they can now. Take for example Pretty Girl - a Zru-lovers staple song originally recorded in 1982. The new version is shorter and more to the point. It now seems unapologetically sure of itself. Still the guitars moan and sob, but it’s become very sure-footed. Less coy, more overt – almost menacingly sexual. Now it crows. 

There’s no weak track on Club Zru. My favorites? Blue Room, Move With the Water, Wigwam Woman... but also Future Typos, Cellophane Drama. And all the rest, really. You can’t go wrong.

Galerie Zru is the “flip-side” of Club Zru. Or maybe a fun-house mirror version? Here, ZV lets their intrinsic Dada hang out. There is humor, mood, café poetry and sorrow all in one place. It’s like they just couldn’t help themselves. Galerie is not for the faint of heart. It is marvelous. 

Favorite track: Statues. Also check out Zeta One Ridiculi to mess with your head.

Zru Vogue: Eleven Eyes

Eleven Eyes: an Idiotique in full swing

(Review by R.C. Barajas)

Eleven Eyes begins with the structured cacophony of gears and ropes and inky mechanized bodies awash in idiotic cocktail talk. And that’s just the opening track.

Zru Vogue returns to their Dada-esque roots with the release of their newest disc - and Tristan Tzara himself could wave a crumpled manifesto in joy. He might even kick off his boots, because this is Dada you can dance to.

Through a creamy, green-hued absinthe lens we follow eleven tracks, and become eleven eyes swirling away from the branches of melting trees into the hot dry landscape and mathematical absurdities assembled by Andrew Jackson and Rick Cuevas. There is chanting, percussion, rain and conversation, wooden flutes, Japanese drums, crunchy guitars and – are those birds? It is an exquisitely engrossing collage. It is See-Thru. It is True Zru.

This Surprised Even Me (Review by Randy Nicolosi)
Whoa!  As a long time Zru Vogue fan, I was unprepared for this full assault on the Zru Senses!  I consider this one of, if not, their best CDs yet. Andy and Rick have locked up this unique combination of - experimental - danceable - soulfull - electronic - MUSIC! In other words, this CD is a singularity - a milestone. Try it and you will understand Zru Vogue (if that is possible!)

***** (Review by M. Petersen)

The world according to Zru is just beginning to dawn on me. After listening to this and other Zru albums, I feel I've had an epiphany.  Wish I had discovered them sooner!  In Eleven Eyes, ethnic sounds, soulful tunes, "funky breaks you can dance to", and a hilarious Dada manifesto, are woven together seamlessly and magically.  It's a fantastic sensory voyage! I find myself floating, laughing, grooving, awakened, moved... and hooked!!!

Zru Vogue: The Exile

Never Cease to Amaze (review by Wineau)
These guys just amaze me; just when you think they've made their best CD they come out with something that blows your mind. These guys (Rick and Andrew) have a masterpiece on their hands with Exile. Funky, electronic, experimental beats, rhythms, and rhymes that will keep you listening again and again. These guys are on a creative roll, and I hope they keep on going. Highly recommended!

All Told, Best Yet (review by Max)
You boys done the zru most mighty proud. Fantastic songs, sounds, vibe, groove. Superb playing, singing, insect wing harmonies, mother fish replication funkulation, it's all there and it's all in the zru-dream-syncopation-fluctuation-microscopic-giant-thrill league. I think you know wum sayin. Yet another groovy Wes Anderson tie-in with Pagoda Mother Fish in that it fits with the Steve Zissou groove dance vibe. I can see him fruging minimally to it now, "It's an adventure." The intro coulda been done on the ship by his crack team of sound surgeons, but then y'all take it into the Zrutosphear leaving the ship in the dust. Very cool. All told, best yet, and that's saying a lot.

My Life in the Bush of Kafka (review by Boris Darling)
I love the new album and can't stop listening to it. It's like "My Life In The Bush Of Kafka." Or perhaps what would happen if Bootsy & Busta joined forces with the Flaming Lips. You guys funk & rock.

Zru Vogue: Survival of the Cutest

The wacky, hypnotic world of Zru Vogue, the Penn & Tellers of the music biz, will have you rigid on your seat for 40 minutes whilst longtime poet Andrew Jackson sing-talks his way through some interesting stories set to music with much help from Rick Cuevas.

A funky groove surrounds “Pretty Fairies” with deliciously creamy bass notes and an overall hypnotic caramel flavour. The second track resembles a Kraftwerk-like backing to Andrew’s distinctive vocals and word-play projecting the song upwards.

“If Blood Was Wine” (a play on Hendrix's “If Six Was Nine”?) is a love story with an unusual lyric and snappy arrangement. The track rises above most of the others and proves to be a real standout piece.

Next we have a Middle Eastern twirl of hot sand that buries the listener in more hypontic spirals and lasts a full five minutes. After a second 'interlude' from Professor Hawking (on speed it seems), “Dig Deeper” has the rock stance of an angry brontosaurus but the whispered, Dylan-ish vocals (reminding me of Everything Is Broken) rests over a ponderous drum machine.

By contrast “Iron Man” is pure play on words and a real cheeky chappie. “Iron Man wears ironed pants,” sings Andrew and with its bushy keyboard approach is both vibrant yet teasing. “No One Knows” has a long intro where the voice interacts with the rhythm of the song perfectly. “Nuthin” is the token bad boys rock song more tap than spinal but then it truly is about nothing!

 “Japanese Schoolgirl Mapping Device” arrives suitably dressed in oriental schoolgirl uniforms with the most simple of keyboard riffs and you wonder what this is all about, what can be in the San Francisco drinking water? More sinister is the “Imperfect” song that follows.

The dramatic finale “Falling Into Quicksand” again is a feast of words that wouldn’t be out of place at the end of Sergeant Pepper (really) — it's the best track on a consistently good album that stands out from the pack. Penn & Teller would approve I am sure.

Zru Vogue: Beautiful Again

Beautiful Again has crawled under my skin - and I mean that in a good way. For those 

of you who know Zru, it is less dark and tribal than one might expect from their earlier work. Instead it has moments of a strange, heady joy, the kind of exhilaration one can only feel after coming out from under and feeling the sun for the first time in years.

Listen to Waited So Long, and Momentum. Andrew Jackson's dreamy, honest voice is, as usual, the perfect medium for his words. This is a magnificent collection of songs - funky, original, addicting. It's Zru in all its newness. And now I just wanna go out and get me some.

Zruism: Zru Vogue 1980-84

This CD captures the magic of ZRU VOGUE, the magic of Nakweda Dream, in a newly available compilation!

Really great, interesting music that you must hear! I love this CD, and I am glad that CD BABY has made it available!

If you like melodic, experimental, surreal, beautiful music you will love this CD!

Zru Vogue: Nakweda Dream

"The whispers of San Francisco are sometimes more haunting than the screams of LA." 

- Sub-Pop magazine named Nakweda Dream the best independent single of 1981.