Like myriad bored teenagers ill equipped to handle the stardom of a music career but promised the limelight from local peers, I was in a band. But before that, I was trapped in my friend’s bedroom manipulating tapes, beaten guitars, adolescent voices, and toys-as-percussion to create an album of complete trash. It was a glorious moment and to our surprisingly large group of friends, our parody of modern tunes and annoying regional personalities was a hit. But the pressure was too great. We got serious, we began copping whole sections of recorded songs in our pursuit for a second hit cassette. It was our downfall, never to flourish and blossom like the mind of MA Turner. ZOZ is an ego trip of half-realized pop songs disguised as trippy experiments of space and sound. Expected from a 12-inch remixing 12 cassettes’ worth of artistic musings that was a gallery installation. Those 83 thoughts are now 13 eas(ier) to handle jabs of inspiration. Without the $150 to purchase the whole collection to study the course of MA Turner’s self-editing process, I can still hear a man with a vision and no expectations tying it to the tunnel sort. ZOZ is ambitious even in its pared form; a menagerie of pop influences whirling by with different trajectories, sometimes colliding by also enhanced by near misses that still cause warping-via-gravitational pull. What boys in a bedroom making silly music has to do with MA Turner is kinship, even if we were merely poking music with sticks as Turner clubs it until its conventional stuffing is spread across the floor. Otherwise, Turner is a man among other boys too afraid to follow a half-thought to a fully formed project. Don’t be scared of growing up, and don’t be scared to be a woman doing it either. Convention is just another word for boring suits who don’t get art.
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