CMJ: Testing Ideas, and Making a Ruckus

Karsten Moran for The New York Times The guitarist Youkaku of the ZZZ's performed at the Bowery Electric in Manhattan on Thursday.

At first glance, ZZZ's were just three Japanese women flailing away with punky intent on drums, guitar and fuzzed-out bass. First glance was wrong.

ZZZ's, who call themselves an “all girls post punk/experimental trio,” reach back to the no wave of the late 1970's and early 1980's. It's not a rudimentary primitivist barrage but a selective collection of tactics involving repetition, dissonance and propulsion. Each of their songs revolved around its own particular handful of ideas: riffs (shared or colliding), texture s (strumming, feedback, tremolo or harmonics plucked on guitar and bass), vocal tones (talking, singing, screaming and actually whispering), repetitions and sudden change.

The songs, which had terse lyrics in English and titles like “Suicide,” bristled every way they could figure out. The beats touched on the late-70's staples of punk, funk, disco and dub reggae, while the instrumental tones could be thinly focused or brutally distorted. ZZZ's were testing concepts in every song; luckily, they were also kicking up an unstoppable ruckus.