Berlin-based Zoon Phonanta is a Welsh/Danish trio and a psychedelic dance of the dead. Raw drums, bass, vintage organs and synths are utilised to brutal effect via epic songs that deliver disco disquietude, motoric krautrock grooves, oscillating horror soundtracks and beyond. Or as the band themselves insist: “the Nicki Minaj of dungeon synth”.
The Zoon Phonanta’s eponymous debut was released in September 2024 on Bronzerat records (home to Jon Spencer and Gemma Ray) and Rookie (Love A, Turbostaat), received enthusiastically and likened to Goblin meets Can meets Swans. The follow-up album released this winter will document the bands evolution into more electronic post-pop songwriting, with guest vocalists counterbalancing the psych and heavy vamp stylings that give their live shows their massive soundscape and intense experience.
Questions and Answers
3 FACTS
1: Three-piece Berlin psych and doom-funk instrumental. Two Welshmen (Zammit A.D. & TNT Taylor) and a Dane (Fred Alert)
2: Debut album came out 2024, finishing up the second.
3: Band name is taken from Greek, an old classification system labelling of ‘Man’. Means The Talking Animal.
11 QUESTIONS
1. What is the biggest inspiration for your music?
Seeing what we can pull down from above, lock in, and feed off of. A need for release, scratching an itch, searching for magic, running away from the world of non-music.
We are not scared of either melody or riffage, we try to meld badassery with beauty, make something a bit different for ourselves.
2. How and when did you get into making music?
We are animals, animals that make music. There was no choice, luckily. I think for all of us it was from when we were first exposed to it as young pups. In my case (Zammit A.D.), my dads very cool record collection from the age of 4 (Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd, Hendrix etc), and then the soundtracks to kids TV shows like Chocky and The Mysterious Cities of Gold, and watching horror movies 12 years too early and getting those Goblin soundtracks etc under my skin.
3. What are 6 of your favourite albums of all time?
Drive Like Jehu – s/t. This album is so sacred it’s not on the DSPs. RIP Rick Froberg. Relentless and cool from start to finish.
Golden – Golden Summer. This album is also so sacred that it can’t be found on the DSP’s. Sounds like it was recorded in a dustbin, but is a prog-surf-jam masterpiece. Drummer Jon Theodore went on to become a rock star many years later. He is on fire in this band as are the other members who were in Weird War, Trans Am etc.
Yamasuki Singers – Le Monde Fabuleux des Yamasuki. This is a 1970s French album, sung in Japanese by French children and a homage to Japan. Made by Daniel Vangarde , father of one of Daft Punk. So melodic, so rousing, great band, awesome groovez.
Max Roach & Abbie Lincoln – We Insist! The Freedom Now Suite. Worth it for the cover alone (a real sit-in), but a jazz-blues Civil Rights masterpiece that should be more famous than it is.
The Fall – Your Future Our Clutter – perfect garage synth cowboy shit.
Nina Simone – To Love Somebody. Hard to choose a Nina album, but let’s go with this because of her ownership of Suzanne by Leonard Cohen.
4. What do you associate with Berlin?
Open-minded people, tons of micro-communities that bump and grind together to make a bouncing baby of a city.
5. What’s your favourite place in your town?
Our studio in Flughafen Tempelhof.
6. If there was no music in the world, what would you do instead?
We would be searching the globe high and low for the mysterious lost music of planet no.3
7. What was the last record/music you bought or listen?
Twisted Teens – s/t. This album is amazing, and could easily be in the top 5 up there. I heard about this band via Sunny War who released this on her Deathcamp label. Everyone we’ve played it to gets obsessed. Even my little infant kids. It’s unapologetically punk meets americana with the best songwriting and delivery and a real clever raw and dry production.
Caspian has a helluva voice.
Tropical Fuck Storm – Inflatable Graveyard.
I rarely listen to live albums but this one I got recently and it really gets me going. Every time I’ve seen them is exciting. Feels like they really captured them here and their soundguy Donno nailed the mix. It’s wild.
8. Who would you most like to collaborate with?
We don’t have a vocalist, and our music is ripe for the plucking when it comes to what it can be a vehicle for. Anyone out there that wants to collab, don’t be shy. We’ve had Gemma Ray lay some amazing vocal textures down over the top. Would love to get someone like Doechii do her thing over the top of it.
We don’t have guitar in this band either, on purpose, but can imagine dissonance from someone like Gareth Liddiard (Tropical Fuck Storm, Springtime), or motoric guitar-bashing from John Reis (Hot Snakes).
9. What was your best gig (as performer or spectator)?
As a spectator gonna say Laurie Anderson’s ARK: United States part V at Factory in Manchester last November (recent enough to still resonate), which was a feast for the ears, eyes and mind. I cried. I feel like it was culmination of her life’s work.
As a band, our album release party at Wiener Blut in Berlin last year stands out, because we were up against it yet managed to pull it out of the bag against the odds. Our band, which has a lot of DI’d instruments running through a PA, should not have played that venue on paper, because there is no PA of sorts, so it was all through amps, no stage. It was intimate, and cathartic.
10. How important is technology to your creative process?
Good question. We use a lot of gear, synths, pedals, so it could be argued that we are dependent on tech. But they are sound generators, instruments. We are still playing and performing and reacting, and we could swap out for different acoustic instruments if we had to. The songs are not written that way. We have a strict no laptop/DAW policy for live shows, which means that there is an element of precarity involved with the kind of electronic-based music we do in this way.
11. What can we expect from your concert at Pop-Kultur 2025?
Sonic drama, controlled chaos, an envelope of melodic noise buoyed and exalted by our naturally rhythmic tendencies. A rollercoaster of emotions, and a temporary expulsion of your demons.
Occasional bursts of ‘geiriau Cymraeg’ delivered via the medium of vocoder.
