Some bands write songs. Others tell stories. Then there are bands like ZAHN, who do something else entirely — they create a sonic road movie.
Just 15 months after their self-titled debut — criminally underrated and that we completely missed on our radar (our deepest apologies for that) — the German instrumental three–piece ZAHN (featuring members of Einstürzende Neubauten, Muff Potter and Heads.) returned in Fall 2023 with ‘Adria’.
Released on Crazysane Records — the ‘small’ but high-quality label founded by band member Chris Breuer and also home to amazing bands like Death By Gong, Entropy, and Heads. — ‘Adria’ is a sprawling second album that resists categorisation while pulling listeners deep into its vivid, cinematic universe.
On paper, ZAHN’s formula shouldn’t work. Their palette mixes krautrock motorik, noise-rock abrasion, doom-laden riffs, post-rock expanses, spaghetti-western twang, and synth-laced ambience. But on record, it makes perfect sense. Each track speaks in its own strange dialect — at times industrial, at times jazzy, at times cinematic — yet always recognisably ZAHN.
It’s as if the trio have invented a language of their own, one that can make a single hi-hat shuffle feel like a highway at dusk, or a staccato guitar line sound like headlights darting past in the night.
‘Adria’ unfolds in chapters. “Zebra” welcomes you in with hypnotic repetition, a slow sunrise over quivering synths. “Zehn” builds into a wall of dissonance that threatens to topple on itself, while “Schmuck” and “Apricot” inhabit a surreal middle ground — part dream, part nightmare, as if a twig snapping in the forest could suddenly spiral into a horror-movie crescendo. “Faser” lulls you with gentle synths before veering into a battering ram of sound, the aural equivalent of stumbling half-awake into the woods and seeing something you’ll never forget.
And just when you think you’ve traced their contours, the closing track “Idylle” — adorned with guest saxophone and eerie Lynchian textures — pulls the curtain down with cinematic finality.
What’s most impressive is not just the stylistic range but the way the album feels alive without a single lyric. ZAHN’s storytelling is purely sonic, yet it summons memories that feel deeply personal: the grit of long travel days, the exhaustion of pitching a tent, the exhilaration of speeding down the autobahn in a rattling campervan. These aren’t rose-tinted holiday memories, but they’re strangely comforting — as if the discomfort itself has become nostalgia.
The making of ‘Adria’ only adds to its scale. Recorded in an old mill in Northern Germany by Peter Voigtmann (The Ocean Collective), its cavernous space gives ZAHN’s drums and bass an almost physical presence. Mixed and mastered by Magnus Lindberg (Cult Of Luna, Russian Circles…), the record captures both the sheer weight of their sound and its intricate atmospheres.
With ‘Adria’ evolving somewhere around the corner between bands like HEADS., MASERATI, METZ, The Jesus Lizard, TORTOISE or Trans AM, ZAHN have proven that instrumental music can be as talkative, emotional, and gripping as any lyric-driven record. They’ve made not just an album, but an experience — one you’ll want to get lost in again and again.
