Silver Mt Zion '13 Blues For Thirteen Moons' album

Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band, initially called A Silver Mt. Zion (aka SMZ), was formed in Montreal by Efrim Menuck, Thierry Amar and Sophie Trudeau (all of Godspeed You! Black Emperor) in 1998. Since their inception, SMZ has become known for their overt redefinition of protest music, their long-form, multi-movement compositions and uniquely inventive punk-rock, and their unfettered honesty and emotion. SMZ's fifth full-length release, 13 Blues For Thirteen Moons, will be released on March 25th, 2008 by Constellation Records.

SMZ have been making a big raw angry tender racket since the 2005 release of their last album, Horses In The Sky.? With a focus on live performance and special projects over the past three years, the group proper has logged well over 100 shows in Europe and North America, in between sessions that yielded Thee Silver Mountain Reveries EP and Thee Silver Mountain Elegies Play War Radio tour (featuring four members of Mt. Zion and both members of labelmates Hangedup), as well as collaborations with Carla Bozulich, Vic Chesnutt and Patti Smith in the studio and in concert.

On 13 Blues For Thirteen Moons, the music of the full band (two guitars, two violins, cello, contrebasse and drums) has grown louder, looser, full of spittle and tears. Riffs are the backbone now more than ever.? Anchored by new drummer Eric Craven (ex-Hangedup), SMZ works its slow build and burn with newfound patience, sinuousness and ferocity. Whether methodically framing walls of sound over the four-on-the-floor punk dirge of "1,000,000 Died To Make This Sound" or exploding in sheets of free noise and melody on "Black Waters Blowed", SMZ has never rocked harder and has never sounded more determined, desperate and driven.

Fans of the group will be familiar with much of the new album's material from SMZ live shows over the past couple of years. The recording, undertaken at the newly renovated Hotel2Tango facility in Montr and co-engineered by Howard Bilerman and Radwan Moumneh (who is also the band's live sound person), ups the ante considerably, with crackling guitar crescendos setting the pace for dive-bombing swirls of strings, while Efrim's voice rasps and wails words of worry, hope and fury throughout. The band's inimitable group vocal suites sound more spine-tingling then ever.

Constellation is thrilled to be releasing this mighty slab on CD and 2x180gLP. Both formats come in their custom cardstock packaging, printed on 100% recycled fine paper, and including (for the first time) lyrics as part of the insert booklet.

"... the group encompass the earthiness of basic rock'n'roll energy and the elevated raptures of a space rock chorale." Tom Ridge, The Wire

"... this remains marvelous music: at once complex and direct; unfashionably serious; uncommonly moving." John Mulvey, Uncut

"Where Godspeed are explosive, this Orchestra rest in the quiet lulls between the stormy peaks. Guitarist Efrim's orchestrations and Neil Young tones exude sadness and anger, urgency and calm." -- Andrew Carden, Mojo

"The album's two pieces...weave a tapestry of piano, guitar, upright bass, violin, organ and various taped and organic sounds that creep slowly across the listener's heart and mind until the almost Beckettian world view expressed in the record's title is all-encompassing and inescapable." -- Phil Freeman, Magnet

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Silver Mt Zion - 13 Blues For Thirteen Moons