Skip to content
Spotlight

zZz

On first listen, zZz sounds like Jim Morrison reincarnated as a Dutch club rat who took too much E and spent time recuperating in church. There’s a lot of grunting and Morrison-styled sensuous vocals, and then there’s that omnipresent organ. zZz is certainly heavily influenced by the Doors: lead singer Bjorn Ottenheim sounds so much like Jim Morrison it’s possible that the notoriously free-loving icon spread his seed all the way to Amsterdam. But the electronic basis of most of the songs off zZz’s debut album, Sound of zZz is impossible to deny.

Daan Schinkel plays the organ on Sound of zZz. His keyboard work is nothing short of pure psych-out bliss. Bjorn and Daan met in Amsterdam’s underground music scene, eventually forming zZz in 2003. With songs titles like “Sweet Sex,” “House of Sin,” and “Ecstasy,” zZz could pass as the male version of Peaches, or a slightly tamer Electric 6. But what distinguishes zZz from these other “dirty” electronic acts is the instrumentation: The use of organ as the building block of most of the songs off Sound of zZz is both innovative and truly captivating. Sound of zZz is out on Howler Records on May 3rd.