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Production History: Zoos of Berlin's Labor of Love

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The packaging for Zoos of Berlin’s new record “Taxis” manages to transform the compact disc format, which is almost inevitably unsatisfying, into a top-flight aesthetic experience. The artwork is eye-catching, deploying muted browns and greens to striking effect. The disc itself is stylishly decorated to complement it. Even the matte finish of the cardboard exudes class. And the band’s music is somehow the perfect match. Just as the graphic design evokes both Soviet constructivism and the playful animations of Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam, Zoos of Berlin’s songs range across decades of popular music history.

Although the electronic pop of the early 1980s seems to be the band’s main influence on first hearing, subsequent exploration of the album’s sonic folds makes it harder and harder to classify. “Juan Matus” begins like one of Sufjan Stevens’ delicate keyboard-centered compositions, only to build to a rock crescendo worthy of Yes. “Doctor Vine Crossing” fuses the gritty organ and guitar bursts of garage rock with the wobbly calliope of psychedelic film scores. Closing track “Coliseum” counters horns that recall early Chicago, circa “25 or 6 to 4”, with rhythms worthy of the Chicago-based post-rock band Tortoise And “Taxis”’s other tracks are no less eclectic.

Within the scope of a single bar, strains of classic soul, glam rock, and arty post-punk repeatedly overlap, creating a kind of aural palimpsest. Throughout the record, however, a consistency of sound reigns supreme. Zoos of Berlin may invoke a diverse range of sources, but this is collage in which individual bits and pieces are rigorously subordinated to the whole. Even if the band is happy to cite their influences, they make it clear that no one bloodline predominates.

In short, “Taxis” exudes professionalism. But close inspection of the brief liner notes, revealed when the disc is lifted from its tray, indicate that for all of the polish of the album’s presentation, it lacks the imprimatur of a record label. Zoos of Berlin released the album themselves. While this fact is not remarkable in itself – the discard bins at music stores and thrift shops have been filled with label-less material since the early 1990s – the production values demonstrated by “Taxis” testify to the arrival of a new era in music history.

Not only do Zoos of Berlin deftly sidestep the stigma that used to befall self-released records, the care they take in managing every aspect of their musical career – even their MySpace page looks good – suggest that they have no pressing need for the backing of a label. That is not to say that they would be averse to being signed. The nuts-and-bolts aspects of record production and distribution remain tedious. And there are ancillary benefits to being on the right label, such as being associated with artists who have a different fan base.

Although the German band Mouse on Mars may not have spent a lot of time thinking about what it meant to be signed to Thrill Jockey Records in the United States, there are plenty of music lovers who discovered them because they were on the same label as Tortoise and The Sea and the Cake and, what is more, found ways of rationalizing their presence on that label’s roster in aesthetic terms. With their skilled invocation of numerous musical genres, Zoos of Berlin seems ideally suited to maximize the advantages of such power of association. But if that window of opportunity is closed – even the best independent labels are diminishing in size and significance – it would not be the end of the world.

While the details of “Taxis” production would be noteworthy regardless of where the band was from, the fact that it hails from Detroit makes them resonate with special force. The metropolitan area both where the assembly line was perfected and where the imperfections of “assembly-line” thinking became most vividly apparent in recent years, that city inspires reflection on manufacturing that extend far beyond the automobile industry. From the heyday of Motown Records’ “hit factory” through the electronic music scene that grew up in the wake of the city’s precipitous decline – Zoos of Berlin have collaborated with techno icon Carl Craig – the meanings ascribed to Detroit saturate the culture with which it is identified.

Even if Zoos of Berlin’s decision to record “Taxis” in the Russell Industrial Center, the site of a former auto body manufacturer transformed into an arts complex, was made largely for aesthetic reasons – the high ceilings yield impressive reverb without the use of electronic effects – knowing this production history imparts an allegorical character to the album. The very sonic quality that makes the record’s collage of influences blur seamlessly together can be directly attributed to the empty space left behind by the automobile industry.

We ordinarily think of ruins as positive elements in a landscape, the remains of structures that have ceased to serve their original function. But the most important feature of former factory spaces like the Russell Industrial Center may actually be their negative space, the square footage they provide for an expansiveness that would otherwise be too costly to achieve. Zoos of Berlin not only recognized this quality – they built a custom recording facility within the structure – but seem to have taken it as an aesthetic challenge, for their record demonstrates how the city’s variegated musical legacies can be forged into the sort of unity that requires a lot of room, literally and figuratively, to assemble.

The irony is that their album represents the return of the very mode of production, in which craftsmen would work on the same task from start to finish, that the assembly line had seemingly consigned to irrelevance. It is, in short, a labor of love. That is surely why the album, which at times sounds distant on first hearing, seems to acquire new emotional depth with each go-round. Like the building in which it was recorded, “Taxis” may be hard to heat, but gives listeners the space they need to work off the chill with their own industry.