Ptolemaic Terrascope:

''Greek combo Zenerik cook up an avant-garde blend of minimalist jazz/psychedelia and the resulting dish is a flavoursome if perhaps acquired taster of Gong bashing out Eric Dolphy’s free jazz (anti) classic “Out To Lunch”. If that sounds a little weird then it’s because it probably is but it also works, especially “Deliverance”, the most fully formed of the five main entities here and which grooves along beautifully with a mellowing lope, the various reeds playing to subtle and quite mesmerising effect over a steady rhythm, supplemented by some gentle moog and melodic guitar. The CD contains three bonus tracks – or to be more precise, three versions of a composition entitled “Fear”, all good.'' (Ian Fraser)

iO Pages (Progressive music dutch magazine):
"Although I’ve never heard of the label “krautjazz”, that the Greek band Zenerik sticks on its music, before, it covers the content in a nice way. What they present sounds like the old work of Can and more like the ‘krautige’ (spicy herbal) German pioniers. And sometimes a bit like experimental jazz-rock as it was used to be made by Magma followers as Zao. The frequent use of the flute reminds you of the older work of Paul Horn. The amount of melodies stays limited, but the scratchy sounds are not that annoying to lead to bleeding ears. However, expect an uncomfortable sound session in the spirit of the misty seventies, with a somewhat ‘trippy’ effect. This album is quite an amusing CD for the adventurous listener, but it’s absolutely not suitable for a family birthday party."

progwereld.org (Wouter Brunner)
If the music year 2015 already is something, it is for me the year of jazz rock. Having previously excellent albums by Nathan Parker Smith, Schnellertollermeier and Panzer Ballett have discussed this site, it is now the turn of the Greek Zenerik, which has been several months ago debuted with "Yenesis". If a band then also protects the qualification 'avant-garde' then worked my interest.

Yenesis, it's no surprise, is Greek for birth. A fitting title for a debut accordingly. Yet it is also a striking album title, given the names of the songs that includes: anxiety - confusion - realization - acceptance - salvation is a development cycle that I in any case not directly associate with a birth. Which themes will be hidden in the numbers, remains unknown. It may be a personal process, but for the same money will be here in 35 minutes summarized the social unrest of recent years.
What is clear is that the titles describe the music very well. After a brief sound clip (perhaps the exegetical key, but I could not make chocolate from there) opens Fear confused, menacing, ominous. Horns blowing, guitars tear, but is mostly played alongside each other and the end piece even sounds like the howling of wolves in the night. Confusion does in confusion obviously not to include, but musical sounds in a lighter stroke. Although the flute replaces the trumpet as lead blower, but remains only a primus inter pares in the attention battle of birds in mating season.
Realization can be seen as the transition number, which in the final minutes the music becoming more melodic and the album is slowly coming to rest. The contrarian disappears and the noses go the same direction. Through Acceptance we end up with the highlight of the album, Deliverance, which can safely be called exaltisch. The pace has been considerably scaled down over it and interweaving guitar and winds its way to salvation. What exactly is the salvation then, God knows, but peace and harmony are the key words of this song, mine still half an hour so had been allowed to continue.

With "Yenesis" Zenerik has shot at me in the eye. The band knows very well emotionally complex music to load and I can not remember which one record in this genre I previously took as a concept. If you must already have identified a flaw, it is the short playing that album unfortunately. For the CD buyer are then again added three variations on Fear for the pain to soften, so I can not help (and will!) Recommend this album than wholeheartedly. The album is free to listen to it on Bandcamp, so go do it especially once!

The Sound Projector (Ed Pinsent)

Fear and Confusion

Got a lot of time for this unusual album from Greece – Yenesis (NEGATIVE POSITIVE) by the seven-piece line-up Zenerik, who characterise their work as “progressive-jazz-psychedelic-folk”. The talented seven players here perform using a mix of rock and jazz instrumentation, woodwinds and electric guitars competing fiercely in the performance space alongside a percussion section that’s determined to hammer everything into the ground. Melodic snatches rub up alongside atonal noise; tuneful proggy instrumentals vie with scrabbly, abstract sections. There’s even a Moog synth player, nicknamed “Super Mario” from Ankh Productions, getting in on the act with quite menacing low-level growls and murmurings. If they want some imagery from Greek mythology, I’ve no hesitation in likening this band to the Hydra, that many-headed serpentine monster which featured so heavily in Herakles’ second labour. If Zenerik appear at times to be fighting among themselves, it’s a friendly brawl and always to great musical effect; the listener has several strands of competing information to decode, intertwined like strange strands of seaweed in a salty wine-dark sea.

The seven players don’t have much of a history that I can find, apart from Lina Fontara who has also recorded with Popi’s Orchestra. The assurance with which this record has been made is remarkable, and it carries a freshness and spontaneity that is highly enjoyable, along with its very clean recording sound. For these and many other reasons, it does feel old-fashioned in a good way, the same kind of straight-ahead production that you used to get on early 1970s prog albums, and it feels like Zenerik are productively revisiting the English jazz-rock agenda which enjoyed its brief flurry of success in the UK. For lovers of records which straddled the 1970s prog-jazz divide such as Keith Tippett’s Centipede, Indian Summer, or John Stevens’ Away, or even early versions of Henry Cow, this record will be most welcome, but this isn’t to say that Zenerik are self-consciously attempting to emulate progressive or psychedelic rock in the same “retro” manner that you find on Sulatron Records, for instance. There’s just a lot of musical craft, a love of playing together, and a refusal to attempt to “update” the sound for contemporary audiences.

It remains to mention the track titles, which are quite pointedly called ‘Fear’, ‘Confusion’, ‘Realization’, ‘Acceptance’ and ‘Deliverance’ – which can easily be read as the story of Greek’s unfortunate economic collapse in the so-called Eurozone crisis, although sadly it doesn’t look as if this poor abandoned country has yet reached the ‘Deliverance’ Stage. This political-economical critique is not explicitly embedded in the music, although ‘Confusion’ contains a lot of anger and dissonant wails, and the album opens with a 30-second babel of voices speaking international languages, possibly sampled from newscasts. A fine distinctive release; there are variant editions, including the CD which has a black cover.

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