beholding the beauty of our eternal compartment...
zruism: zru vogue 1980-84
"The whispers of San Francisco are sometimes more haunting than thescreams of LA."
- Sub-Pop magazine writing about Zru Vogue
in 1981"This CD captures the magic of ZRU VOGUE, the magic of Nakweda Dream, If you like melodic, experimental, surreal, beautiful music you will love this CD!"
- Wineau, Shelton, CT
"Zruism" includes the complete studio recordings of Zru Vogue from 1980 to 1984:
Nakweda Dream / Cumulonimbus (1981), Zru Vogue The Album (1982), and Zru Vogue Now! / Possibly Imagined / The Artist (1984). All tracks were digitally remastered to CD from the original studio master tapes. Bonus track: "Big Fish Swing" from the 1982 Zru Vogue Album sessions.
Zru Vogue was all over college radio in the early 80's. Several Zru Vogue songs were in heavy rotation, including "Cumulonimbus" (Britain's New Musical Express described it as a "neo-African avalanche"), "The Dream Stops", and "Ubuhuha" (pre-techno trance funk). But the certifiable hit of its day was "Nakweda Dream", a haunting song with a lilting melody that Sub-Pop named the best independent single of 1981.
In the early 80's, Zru Vogue tended to be a reclusive group, preferring to play mysterious improvised music in candlelit living rooms late at night; but they did get out to perform occasional one-night stands in San Francisco and the Bay Area's major rock clubs. Zru Vogue performances were always unconventional, incorporating performance art, neo-dada poetry, and improvisation.
songs from zruism: zru vogue 1980-84:
Cumulonimbus, Nakweda Dream, Do The Zru, The Dream Stops, Loubella Extendables, Pretty Girl, Exploring The Underworld,
For The Time, Ubuhuha, Big Fish Swing, Now!, Possibly Imagined, The Artist.
download these songs free (high quality MP3)
website exclusive downloads: > Nakweda Dream (unreleased first take) > Zippy's Theme (home recording, dedicated to Bill Griffith) |
from the blogosphere:
"Nakweda Dream is probably one of the most charming songs I’ve ever heard, and one of a few that I can listen to looping hour after hour and still walk away humming the melody without a shred of annoyance. That said, as many times as I’ve explored its scenic peaks and haunted valleys, for some reason a fluid description completely evades me. Within you'll find poetic but somber male vocals, a nice danceable rhythm, and that sad weepy guitar thing, which compounded will surely expose the soft spots of your inner being. But then, lingering just beneath all of it there is this immense and inescapable sense of madness lurking about, which like an improperly sedated schizophrenic, threatens to explode in fiery cloud of shrapnel any moment. And maybe, just maybe, it does."
- Life on the Dot blog
beautiful again