About this item

Emil Amos was originally commissioned by the legendary KPM music library to make this music for use in television and film. But after the executive overseeing their experimental wing exited the company, Emil brought ‘Zone Black’ to Drag City and remixed it into a proper full-length album. While the record was originally inspired by old school 1970s television music, like the grim, descending riffs that took us to commercial as the running back strained in anguish for the ball in slo-mo, it became a genuine attempt to reach towards a new kind of library music.

Emil (Grails, OM and podcaster supreme) carves out a much more personal interpretation of what we think of as ‘music for television’ with ‘Zone Black’. Taking classic, dark pieces that he grew up with as inspiration, like the ‘Lonely Man Theme’ from the original ‘Hulk’ TV series, he fantasized an alternate environment where composers were allowed to explore more extreme states of mind, while on much witchier drugs, fully separating library music from its outmoded commercial constraints. Imagine Brian Eno recording ‘Another Green World’ equipped with Madlib’s gear and a much darker sense of humour, or Kafka creating ‘The Castle’ with a Juno keyboard and sampler instead.

In the spirit of classic synth-based soundtracks like ‘Firestarter’ or ‘Midnight Express’, the instruments narrate the experience. Urban landscapes in noirish chiaroscuro, fatal encounters unfurling beneath the persistent glow of riot lights, last-ditch meetings in pre-dawn discotheques, all evoked with synths, harpsichords and mellotrons drifting over drum machines and the arachnoid radiation of FX disappearing up into the darkness. Every track illuminates a different corridor of Emil’s brain, but AE Paterra and Steve Moore of ZOMBI periodically step in to contribute sax solos and drum beats to amp the coloration up.

‘Zone Black’ is a fully inhabitable world, its episodic narrative divided into an improbable balance between morbid, ambient anthems and insouciant hip-hop instrumentals. Emil hadn’t heard it done quite this way before, so he took it upon himself to make the sound real. And if you don’t hear it in the next, big horror feature, it’ll make great mood music for tripping in the bathtub while dreaming of a new horizon of music to take drugs to. Listening to Emil Amos’

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: I'm a huge fan of Emil : Grails, Om, Lilacs & Champagne,
Holy Sons, the list goes on. What's immediately clear about 'Zone Black' is that he's taken influence from each one of his projects, the soaring opium-den majesty of BTP-era Grails or the jagged sex-funk chug of L&C and perfectly drawn them together into a wonderfully breath-taking whole, a steamy juxtaposition of cut-up samples and triumphant organic instrumentation. Ace.

TRACK LISTING

Moving Target
Theme From A Personal
Prison
Zone Black
Bad Night At Cowboys
Personal Prison II
Red Palms
Jealous Gods
Interloper #1
Zone Bleu
Static Mist
Static Mist II
Realistic #1
Blue Palms