Zilla - November 5, 2005
Zilla is a trio from Boulder, CO that is remarkable for it’s ability to create spontaneous compositions. Their live shows are 100% improvisation. You see, these guys are the best of friends and they all believe in the group mind. For them, a good show is all about listening to each other so well that each individual musician’s voice melts into the collective whole. At a Zilla show, the musicians are all so on the same page that the sky cracks open and the music plays the band!

Zilla’s musical conversations are a discourse of patterns, melodies, pumping bass and get up and shout beats. Tribal thunderstorms of percussion run down the spine of a lush, melodic and nasty matrix of sound… How many all-improvisational live-electronica hammered dulcimer trance bands have you heard?

Less is more. Play like a loop. Listen first, then play. These are some of the mantras that help guide the band in their quest to play music that serves everyone in the room, not just the musicians themselves. With ergonomic simplicity and immaculate time keeping, Zilla slowly builds rhythmic tension, and then releases it with their signature break-through explosions that seamlessly morph into ambient sound-scapes. Zilla’s musical energy manifests with relaxed fury and inscrutable honesty, creating spontaneous order. Expect a dynamic, highly percussive trance-induced journey that fuses hammered dulcimer wizardry and intricate rhythms into a source of telepathic musical expression, all created in the now time.

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Band Information
Jamie Janover — hammered dulcimer, mini-kit, percussion, sampler, electric kalimba, electric sitar, mini-electric kalimba, water
Michael Travis — drums, hand percussion, sampler and keyboards
Aaron Holstein — bass, guitar, sampler, keyboards, foot pedal controller, vocals