ZORO

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Review written by Sébastien Jobart on Friday, January 05th 2007 - 9 205 views A South African who crosses the globe to record his first album in Sweden: it is not an everyday trajectory. It is that of Zoro, a native of the outskirts of Cape Town who left in 2003 to try his luck in cold Scandinavia. There he joined the producers of Breakmecanix. After three years of recording and assorted touring under the weight of the harsh local climate (photos in the booklet to prove it), Zoro finally released his first album at the end of 2006, "Gugs News", on the Swedish label Juju Records, based in Malmö. His lyrics (sung in English or in Xhosa, his mother tongue), denouncing the injustices of a system gangrenous with the legacy of apartheid, bear the mark of his past in the daily violence of Cape Town's shanty towns. They rest on a solid and original production, like Left alone and its accordion breakthroughs, or Jabulani, which recalls Winston McAnuff's new career on the fringes of reggae. Breakmecanix Production took a broad view for this first opus, and "Gugs News", with its diverse and varied influences, eyes reggae, dancehall, world music and even hip hop (the successful Enkosi Mama). The dancehall tracks, the album's weakness, are far from convincing as much as their reggae counterparts (a third of the album each), of which one will remember first the sombre Fallen Heroes, with its heartfelt vocal. Zoro's nervy phrasing oscillates between singing and deejaying without ever tipping over, most often avoiding the well-known diptych of sung choruses and toasted verses. The other one drop tracks (Far Away from home, One in a million and the haunting Never give up) are all real successes, but struggle to rebalance a disparate album.

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