Speaking to Emil Amos and Alex Hall in 2024 ahead of Lilacs & Champagne’s comeback LP, Fantasy World, and the Grails co-founders spoke about AI and the game to outrun it.
In truth, Amos began this crusade a year earlier with Zone Black – the second release under his own name. A wild mélange of fractured, drug-inspired head music, Amos is at it again on the follow-up, Zone Blue, this time together with Zombi’s Steve Moore.
While Amos rarely dips into the world of collaboration, he and Moore share the same lust for the odyssey. And alongside Moore’s Zombi bandmate, Anthony Paterra, currently ripping it up alongside Amos in Grails, it shouldn’t come as a great surprise that their radical concepts would eventually entwine. Together on Zone Blue, they continue to bamboozle the algorithm with something that transcends the fever dream.
Strange Paradise: In Conversation with Grails’ Emil Amos & Alex Hall – Part 1
Zone Blue is a far cry from its predecessor. Moore, incorporating his soundtrack-flavoured ideas from Zombi, Miracle and his many of other projects into Amos’ dark vortex of sound. The results are expansive, and with ideas pulled from so many different worlds, it results in both artists obliterating the borders of their own.
While the duo dispense mind-altering head-fuckery, they have some help. Featuring an all-star cast, including Amos’ former Grails’ bandmate, Zak Riles and regular gun for hire, Tyler Trotter, Verity Den’s Casey Proctor, Kelly Pratt and Ryan Oldham, it’s this range of musicianship that enhances Zone Blue’s vision.
It’s a confirmation that something can actually rise from the dead. Psychedelia, something that has become so weighed down by an abundance of sound-alikes that, at times, it feels like a pointless task trying to sort the wheat from the chaff. But like their bid to push against the nefarious forces of AI, not even those standing on the shoulders of the psych giants can reach the heights Amos and Moore accomplish on Zone Blue.
Emil Amos / Steve Moore - Zone BlueWith some narcotic overhang from Zone Black, there’s a soft, subversive energy at play here. It comes on slow. Like sliding into a hot bath as the smell of herb and incense form a wicked aroma. The richly exotic one-two of The Falls and Galleria, underpinned by beautiful brass sections that gently kiss off the marble floor. It gives both pieces a wonderful, seductive edge.
The aesthetic carries into Interloper II. A companion to Zone Black’s Interloper #1, it possesses the kind of cinematic patina that would’ve won a Grammy in the ’80s for best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media.
Naturally, there’s some residue from Amos’ recent works, too. The Miracle Music-tinged Steam Vent and roaming desires of Garden Music and Steve’s Giallo (the latter a nod to Moore’s involvement in Goblin), resonating with the same cosmic fairy dust Grails have sprinkled across the experimental landscape during this decade. And it continues later on Arranged Release II; something of a love child between Anches En Maat’s eponymous track and Acid Rain.
Shaped by Proctor’s driving basslines on Zone Blue’s highlight, TX7, she helps pull Zone Blue through to a new frontier. It’s where Moore really fills the grooves, leading into the krautrock-infused Natural Wonders. Something that feels so natural, effortlessly moving through the gears.
The cosmic rush hits its peak on the borderless 3am. A fitting finale where Amos and Moore reach a sparkling, panoramic view like no other. While many may consider both Zone Blue and Zone Black library music, it’s one of those moments in musical history where it’s far too expansive for such milieus. If anything, it’s punk, such as its inventiveness in what is music designed exclusively for the outer-reaches.
It’s something of a code, and Amos has often spoken about cracking it. Alongside Moore, he’s one step closer to that moment. Like his endeavours in Lilacs & Champagne, Zone Blue adopts the same lawlessness. The rules? There simply aren’t any. It’s the whole point of both punk and psychedelia, and while so many have lost sight of that, Zone Blue sees Amos and Moore plant the flag in the centre of a promised land many thought no longer existed.
Zone Blue is out now. Purchase from Bandcamp.
