Zita Swoon
Big City

Zita Swoon.

Certainly not the most well-known group in the world.

Zita Swoon are a Belgian band that we could define as the “more pop-centric offshoot” of the better-known dEUS.

Formed in Antwerp, Belgium, in '93 as A Beatband, they changed their name after an EP to Moondog Jr., but also abandoned the latter after only one album due to legal issues, thus becoming Zita Swoon and marking the departure of dEUS' founder Stef Kamil Carlens.

Being able to fully dedicate himself to his new project, SKC, together with Zita Swoon, releases three albums marking a musical journey that transforms from the alternative-rock of their beginnings into a continuous mix of genres which consistently maintains a thread of refined, intelligent, and above all fresh pop.

In this "Big City," we find the perfect result of this journey; the mixture of genres is complete, and we find 1980s disco influences blending with funk as in “I Feel Alive In The City,” or jazz be-bop sounds painted with a noir touch in “Je Range,” with lyrics in French, eventually reaching the Belgian folklore of “L'Opaque Paradis,” folklore nonetheless tainted with influences and Cuban inserts on one side and Middle Eastern on the other.

The strength of this work is precisely this absence of a fixed musical reference, a condition of “sound clandestinity” that leads the listener to travel through the various musical cultures explored, from the electronically-tinged Nick Drake-style folk of the title track to the South American lullaby disguised as a chanson française in “Humble.”

An album that could be defined as challenging, not so much to understand as to appreciate, a difficulty that represents the other side of the coin of that fantastic kaleidoscope of musical cultures that "Big City" represents; but it is a difficulty that, once overcome, leaves only the pleasure of music that finds in the adjective “global” the word that best defines it.

Dedicated timidly and silently to the “acid broom” that introduced me to Zita Swoon.