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Introducing the debut Studio album featuring Michael Travis of The String Cheese Incident (drums/percussion), Jamie Janover (hammered dulcimer) and Aaron Holstein (bass).

all iZ hits stores on September 5, 2006 (SCI Fidelity Records)

Zilla is a group of musicians with the live musical experience in mind. The Boulder, Colorado based trio is a 100% organic, improvised creation – both on stage and in the studio. Relying on their uncanny ability to listen and incorporate their individual talents into a group-focused brand of live electronic dance music, Zilla is turning heads with their rare breed of rock-solid beats, huge bass, and uncontrollable musical fury.  The result is spontaneity, flow, deep grooves and a damn good dance party.

Each Zilla concert proves to be a completely unique occurrence, with even the band members having no idea where the music will take them night after night. And Zilla’s studio approach is the same.  For their debut studio album, all iZ, the material they recorded was entirely improvised.

all iZ, to be released on September 5, 2006 on SCI Fidelity Records, is a double disc set featuring nearly two hours of original Zilla music.  The recording was selected from over 16 hours of material; favorite moments from 100% improvised studio performances tracked directly to tape in February 2006.  The music was edited and mixed entirely by the band themselves.  all iZ captures Zilla in the moment: the music flows, grooves, and glides across a wide variety of rhythms, melodic textures, and vibes, offering a deep sonic journey for the adventurous soul.

Zilla is: 

Michael Travis (drums, percussion, keyboards, sampler, mallet Kat) - Travis has spent over a decade as the driving percussive force in the internationally known band, The String Cheese Incident. Travis continues to be an innovator of improvisational drumming, holding down the rock solid beats that are the foundation of the Zilla sound, while simultaneously playing hand percussion and lush melodic and harmonic keyboards/mallet Kat.

Jamie Janover (hammered dulcimer, mini-kit, electric kalimba, mini-sitar, sampler, percussion, tampoura, tongue drum, water) - Jamie is a world-renowned hammered dulcimer innovator whose long list of band credits includes Meeting of The Minds, Everyone Orchestra, and Mo Realms. In addition to winning the 2002 National Hammered Dulcimer Championships, Jamie has recorded eight hammered dulcimer albums and plays adventurous solo shows.  Janover continues to expand the limits of all his instruments by creating a fusion between their timeless sounds and the pertinent call of today’s modern dance scene.

Aaron Holstein (bass, keyboards, sampler, vocals/vocoder/beatbox) – Aaron has a long and lush musical history, playing guitar with bands such as Boogie Shoes, Future Jazz Project, and VibeSquad. Holstein’s musical evolution has transformed him from a typical guitar/bass player, to an applauded adapter leaving behind the traditional notions of what it is to “jam” with a guitar or bass. Aaron is an accomplished electronic music producer, specifically designing synths/sampled sounds for the Zilla live experience and has created a massive low end sound to truly match the rhythmic and harmonic fury of Travis and Jamie.

While each individual’s accomplishments are impressive, the group identity theory behind Zilla is what truly makes the band unique. The constant focus of the group is to create a whole, complete sound devoid of fragmentation, tangential wandering solos and other elements that characterize typical improvisational music today. The music strives to serve all those participating - especially the audience. No one in the band has any idea what is going to happen a nanosecond ahead of time; they rely on their instincts and musical history together to create a sound that rarely strays from its intentions. The collective whole is truly the dominant force in this band.  The music itself is a plethora of grooves, beats and layers of melodic and harmonic soundscapes, which engulf the listener within the sonic matrix of sounds encompassing them. Rooted, deep, down-tempo grooves transform into high energy breakbeat excursions and drum-n-bass journeys, always dub-wise, way-funky, and eternally emotional. 

Zilla is about being as aware as humanly possible in the moment. The band plays, the crowd reacts, the band reacts and so on and so on. A cyclical paradigm is created in which everyone plays a part.  Essentially, Zilla is the ultimate live experience - future music. Many bands try to accomplish the amount of telepathic musical communication that these three musicians have attained. This band is all about the music first, which is how it should be. The music plays the band, and not the other way around. Their infectious positive energy has crowds from North America to Japan dancing up a storm to a completely new brand of live musical experience.