In a year that has already hit so many rock bottoms, you must find that sweet spot between daily hangovers and blackouts where you can celebrate with things that brighten the otherwise bleak and bloated corners of your world. The happiness window can be a short-lived moment, so why would anyone fill that time by listening to musical excreta when they could be listening to songs in the key of life that are “full of midi slap bass and all?”
Today, we are proud to premiere a perfect liaison between ear and eye. Sprouting from Toronto’s always-fertile scene, ZONES has jumped from strength to strength with each new release, but “Wine Cop” has a peculiar and particularly fresh sense of bounce. The video was created by ace Australian animator and director Benjamin Portas, who has contributed distinctive sequences to recent videos by Courtney Barnett and John Grant. For “Wine Cop”, Portas’ fluid, psych-surreal image mover couldn’t suit ZONES’ goodfoot groover better.
Taken from the recently-released The State of Light (on Toronto’s Hand Drawn Dracula, available here), “Wine Cop” is a high-point and the spirit guide for the album as a whole. As Derek McKeon (a.k.a. ZONES) states, “This was the first track I wrote for the LP and its loose, off the grid feeling rhythm section completely inspired the direction and sound of the record. It emerged out of a series of magical jams and opened a door to a whole sonic world I needed to explore, full of midi slap bass and all.”
ZONES has but one lone live date — a hometown The State of Light release show at Toronto’s Dance Cave on November 22 with New Chance, Daniel Benjamin, and World Sounds — but we’re keeping our fingers crossed for more shows to be announced soon. In the meantime, raise a glass to good art in bad times with the arresting “Wine Cop” below.
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