"Zu has always been a mercurial and ever-changing entity: unafraid of cross-genre explorations, eager to break down barriers between musical styles. Despite playing traditional instruments, major influences on Zu's music have always been sonic explorers like Coil, Throbbing Gristle, or early Neubauten. The sound of The Left Hand Path is the somewhat hidden side of Zu, though latent in all of its previous music. It's like digging out a box from the earth, containing everything the band had wished to highlight in previous works: ambient and droney landscapes; acoustic explorations in obscurity. The album starts programmatically with the sound of a shovel digging the earth -- a soundtrack for a descent into the underworld. It's moon musick. All of the members played electronics and Massimo focused mostly on guitars. The recordings were then sent to Eugene S. Robinson of Oxbowfame. Zu knew he was the right person to add vocals to it, and to transform the music again, into a sort of contemporary post-everything voodoo blues."
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Jacopo Battaglia / electronics
Massimo Pupillo / electronics, guitar
Luca Tommaso Mai / saxophone, electronics
Eugene S. Robinson / vocals
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Available as 320k MP3 or 16bit FLAC
Massimo Pupillo is a bass player and composer originally from Rome Italy. He is mostly known for his work with the band Zu. For over fifteen years, his modus operandi of straddling and abusing musical genres has resulted in over 15 album releases across labels such as Ipecac, Atavistic, Daymare Recordings and Headz (Japan). John Zorn described Zu as "a powerful and expressive music that totally blows away what most bands do these days".
Massimo has released over 50 albums and performed more than 2000 shows throughout Europe, US, Canada, Asia, Russia, Mexico and Africa, touring with the like of Mike Patton (as the Zu/Patton quartet), also sharing the stage with Faith No More, Sonic Youth, Fantomas, The Melvins, Lightning Bolt, The Ex, Nomeansno, Deerhoof, and countless others.
He has collaborated with a vast number of musicians including Mike Patton, Thurston Moore, Stephen O Malley, Damo Suzuki (Can), Mats Gustafsson, Buzz Osbourne (The Melvins), Dälek, David Tibet (Current 93), Jim O' Rourke, FM Einheit (Einsturzende Neubauten), Peter Brötzmann, Nobukazu Takemura, Eugene Robinson (Oxbow), Steve MacKay (The Stooges), The Ex, Nomeansno, Guy Picciotto and Joe Lally (Fugazi), Toshinori Kondo, Chris Corsano, Otomo Yoshihide, Paal Nilssen-Love, Brian Chippendale (Lightning Bolt), Oren Ambarchi, Alvin Curran, Lasse Marhaug, Lukas Ligeti, Han Bennink, Ken Vandermark, Hamid Drake, Bobby Previte, Carla Bozulich, and in classical music with Katia & Marielle Labeque, Viktoria Mullova, and many others.
