Zanias
Cataclysm
Fleish
With five LPs to its name, we’re now not only looking at the material released by Alison Lewis under her Zanias alias as having a lineage and set of influences quite separate from her work within Linea Aspera and Keluar (or from the aesthetic established by her Fleisch label, for that matter), but also as having a series of shifts and phases within the Zanias project itself. It’s fitting, then, that new LP Cataclysm offers the clearest viewpoint we’ve had to date on those different aesthetic moves, past and present, as shifts and metamorphoses make up a large amount of the thematics which flesh out the record’s decidedly trance-influenced sound.
Lewis has used the Zanias project to flip through rave and club sounds of decades past since its inception (along with plenty of more experimental, ethereal, and acoustic styles), but the first EP under Lewis’ new Serpentskin handle, released earlier this year, indicated that she was interested in further exploring the trance elements which dotted their way through 2023’s excellent Chrysalis, which demonstrated just how pliable and emotionally affecting Lewis’ interpretation of darkwave could be. While Cataclysm is not nearly as down the pipe trance in terms of song constructions as the Serpentskin record, there’s a clear crossover of the same influences which shaped that project throughout the record, best exemplified by the candy-coloured, blissed out pads of “Human”. And as much as it’s tempting to simply draw lines back to the trance tunes old and new which Cataclysm clearly draws upon, there’s more to be taken from how it harmonizes with and breaks from the preceding Zanias catalog itself.
If Chrysalis was the sound of a reflective journey home from a rave in the night’s dying hours, Cataclysm is the sound of an epic cross-country road trip kicked off by said revelatory night of partying. Midtempo breaks and Lewis’ driving vocals on “Naiad” guide you across hilltops with incredible vistas, the softly echoing acoustic strum of “Ashes” leaves you stranded and hitchhiking through one-horse towns, and the lushly detuned darkwave of “Whiteout” wends its way through forested side roads at dusk. If that extended travel metaphor feels a bit strained, well, there’s always been a focus on place and geography ever since Lewis instantiated Zanias as a project (see our discussion of those themes in 2019’s Into The All). Here, the integration of trance sounds and a now firmly established sense of pop structure adds a sense of movement and adventure to that topography.
At the same time, the way that trance, darkwave, pop, and at least a couple of nods to Lewis’ minimal wave roots are rapidly cycled through on Cataclysm contrasts with standalone releases in the Zanias catalog like the Harmaline and Extinction EPs which used a stoic and almost solemn delivery of techno beats and darkwave to directly wrestle with environmental concerns. There’s a sense of constant movement and mutation throughout each piece on Cataclysm, and its likely not by accident that the combination of reptilian and aquatic imagery which has accompanied the record seems to matches this; things are constantly coiling, shedding, flowing. “Ghostbird” begins with a chirpy melody which recalls nothing less than Alice Deejay before twisting itself into a dark maze of murky drones, stabbing synths and liquid drum fill samples (the latter recalling the likes of Pinch and Balam Acab). Whether in the space of a single track, single release, or the near decade, “the only constant thing is change” as Lewis herself observes on “Dawn”. Recommended.
