When Zak Sally left his position as bassist for the minimalist rock band Low after 12 years, he was pretty certain he was done with music, choosing instead to concentrate on his cartooning (Recidivist, Sammy The Mouse), and his small-press venture, La Mano 21. However, he remained absolutely terrified by music, and so found himself drawn back into the basement with the self-imposed rule to write/play/sing/make every sound in every song—no matter what. Eventually he brought the whole mess over to his friend Ben Durrant’s (Andrew Bird, Dosh, Shearwater) Crazy Beast studio and they made a record out of it. That record is called Fear of Song, and it’s not elegant, literary, graceful, virtuosic, pastoral, clever, or compositionally astounding; it’s the sound of one man clanging.This single is one song from that record (to be released this summer by the aforementioned La Mano 21 as a handmade and signed, limited-edition CD) and another that’s not. And they’re both great. Music is clearly not as willing to be done with Zak.
