Zozobra Tests

I posted a few Hydrahead items over the last couple of months that I picked up from some dude who used to help run the label. The transaction wasn't entirely smooth. I paid and then weeks and weeks went by without him shipping them out. All the while I sensed that he was a good guy and wouldn't rip me off, but at various points I did start to worry.

One day he called me up via an instagram video call to tell me that he was going to make up for the delays by sending me a couple of extra records for free. In the end he sent me two test presses, which made me very happy.

Zozobra was a band formed in 2006. They appeared out of nowhere with their debut LP 'Harmonic Tremors'. I picked up a copy of the LP when it came out, even though the only vinyl version was a numbered tour press. I listened to that LP a fair bit when it came out, when I was deep into the Isis / Pelican type sound that blew up back then. The test press comes in a sleeve which is a basically just a paper flap.

So a couple of years after the first LP came out, I got a little tired of that whole scene. Hydrahead started to put out stuff that I just wasn't interested in, and I pretty much stopped buying their releases completely. So when the second Zozobra LP, 'Bird Of Prey', came out in 2008 I had moved on and wasn't interested. And just like the first LP, the only vinyl version was a numbered tour press, so it wasn't easy to get even if I had wanted one.

Last year I saw Cave In play in London, and at one point Aaron Turner joined them on stage and sang a couple of songs. At the end he said 'We were Zozobra' (or something similar). Those were my two favourite songs of the night, so heavy and intense. So after that I downloaded the second Zozobra LP and was blown away by it. Way better than the first. And I felt like a fool for ignoring it for 11 years. The record itself is still pretty expensive to pick up, so I was pretty stoked to get a test press of it.

I just checked discogs, and both of these test presses have sold 3 or 4 times, with each selling for $60-70 every time. So it was very nice to be given these as an apology.