Zsa Zsa Gabor is dead. Not the actress—though that’s also true—but the experimental noise project by Stay Strange founder Sam Lopez, who recently performed his last show under the project’s name. Yet realistically, Zsa Zsa Gabor was always anything that Lopez felt like doing at any point in time, subject to whatever musical whim had captured his interest. That often meant creating abrasive, difficult, pop-unfriendly sounds, but not exclusively.
Left Skull Bank, Lopez’s final release under the Zsa Zsa Gabor name, is a broad showcase for the various influences and impulses that drive his music. Just the first two tracks alone offer a strong contrast between sounds. “Speaking of Glowing Embers” is a brief track performed on guitar, and it’s melodic and beautiful, more of an ambient track than anything explicitly “noise” driven. Yet the next song, “Left Skull Bank I,” is essentially a dark canvas splattered with distortion, screaming and ominous open space. These are both the work of the same artist, though they sound like they come from vastly different realms.
That’s essentially how all of Left Skull Bank progresses. The album ping-pongs between intense moments of dissonance and brief exercises in beauty and grace. It’s disorienting, but then again that’s sort of the point of noise art: to bring listeners out of their comfort zone. That being said, it’s an enjoyable experiment much of the time, revealing a new perspective to music—compositional or lack thereof—with each track change. “Left Skull Bank II” juxtaposes spoken word passages against abrasive strings, while “Entrance II” sounds like an oddly-tuned cello being plucked. There are demonic-sounding backward passages on “New East,” sci-fi synth effects on “Left Skull Bank III,” ambient waves on “Angel Hunt” and a strange blend of static and unidentifiable melodic sounds on “Untitled.”
While Left Skull Bank is kind of all over the place, it all makes sense together in a peculiar sort of way that only noise recordings can. But music this free form also offers its own challenge, making it entirely understandable why Lopez would decide to retire the project. That is, if an artist’s music truly can be anything, and it’s already been seemingly everything, where is there left to go?