Emmanuel ‘Manu/Zorch’ Ninet
http://www.myspace.com/zorchfactor/
http://www.zorchfactor.com/
http://www.myspace.com/zorchcamp/
http://www.camp-z.com/
http://www.myspace.com/zorchfactory/
http://www.zorchfactoryrecords.com/
http://www.myspace.com/thecemetarygirlz/
Emmanuel (Manu) Ninet had very winding way in his musical career. He began to play when he was just six year old boy, and played cello until he finished the music school at the age of fourteen. Then he abandoned music first time. When he was about twenty he had strong inspirations of hard rock, French alternative rock, punk, etc, so he decided to continue playing. He became the drummer of a small musical band of his friends. But after about three years of playing drums and guitar, Manu decided to be out of music, according to his personal reasons in 1996.
In the beginning of XXI century Emmanuel faced the post-punk/goth music. He was impressed by discovering the movement, and, while looking for more information about it, he met many people through the internet. One of his new acquaintances was Saphire, the founder of the band ‘Sleeping Children’; they met each other in 2001. Fascinated with that new for him music, he decided to play once again. “Going back into music on the net gave me the idea of playing again. And I went back to my now old guitar, learned my first synth drums software and started recording horrible stuff. As I was listening to a lot of post punk, what I made started sounding post punk.”, – Manu recalls.
Some time later, in 2003, Saphire offered Manu to join ‘Sleeping Children’ on drums, and Manu accepted it. At the moment of joining, ‘Sleeping Children’ was Julien (vocals), Nico (guitar), ThomS (bass) and Saphire (keyboards). Julien and Nico were the new members too. This line up had existed since September, 2003 till March 2004. During this period the band had several concerts in France, Germany and Belgium, and also released the demo which has never been released. It’s the only record in the history of the band with a drummer. In March 2004 all the line up except Saphire left the band according to some musical reasons. While Manu was taking a part in ‘Sleeping Children’, he also run his solo project. “At the same time I started doing stuff on my own I had joined Sleeping Children on drums. But I wanted to experiment singing, guitar, etc. So I started recording, and chose my nickname of the time Zorch and added Factor. My first project Zorch Factor was born. At first it was really minimal, with a really poor sound quality… I had no gear to record properly… But I tried. And some people were interested so I carried on”, – Manu says. The first Zorch Factor EP, called ‘Voodoo Billy Man’, was released in 2004. Actually it’s difficult to give some style characteristics to this EP. Vocals on the most songs strongly remind some metal stuff, even more than ‘goth’. The music is hard and obscure. There should be underlined psychobilly guitar additions which seem very interesting there. Perhaps, the most interesting song on this EP is ‘Beef Beat’, which goes straight after ‘Intro’. In this song one can see these influences divided in two parts. The main one sounds more like post-punk/psychobilly with clear vocal line, and the chorus part sounds more aggressive like hard post-punk/metal with distorted vocals. This song is a sort of preparing a listener to the whole EP. Then just one year later the band released its first demo-album, called ‘The Last Shower’. This work seems more mature in comparison with the previous one. It contains also two re-recorded songs from ‘Voodoo Billy Man’, called ‘Sick Priest’ and ‘Voodoo Trance’. The best way to characterize the album, most likely is to compare these versions of the songs. The vocals there are not so fierce, and the music became more tempered as well. In this album ‘Zorch Factor’ partly lost its swelling atmosphere. It can be called the change to the better, because the music got some light melancholic notes, which are expressed in the best way in the song, called ‘Sad’. Also there should be underlined that the music there came closer to post-punk/gothic rock.
Both releases were recorded by Manu only at his home studio, but when the ‘Sleeping Children’ line up left Saphire alone, the musicians (Manu, Nico, Thoms and JP) tried to reform Zorch Factor into the band. The band gave some shows, and also re-recorded the songs from ‘The Last Shower’, called ‘Wish/Hate’ and ‘Shadow of Life’, which were released only on the ZF myspace page. But some time later the musicians found themselves too busy in their activity (Nico and Thoms play in ‘Violet Stigmata’), and Manu had some other ideas as well. So he finished his activity in Zorch Factor, and started another project, called ‘Camp Z’ in the end of 2005. Just a few months later, in April 2006, the first self-titled album was released. The album begins with the atmospheric intro, called ‘Credo FK’, where the obscure music combines with the sample, which speaks in Russian about the unity of the USSR on the ruins of the previous system. And once again, the next song ‘Whats This World’ seems the real introduction to the album. The dark swelling voice repeats there “Endless falling into the Dark…”. Perhaps it’s the best description of the whole release. Then one can hear plenty of influences. It can be ‘dark electro’ background of ‘Alice in Trance’, post-punk sensitivity of ‘The Right To’, or even strange combinations of styles in ‘W.Hell.Come’ with vocals a-la James Hetfield (‘Metallica’). In whole this release is a good one. It exactly has hits, like ‘D.Hell.Usion’, or above mentioned ‘The Right To’. But it seems like Manu didn’t manage co combine all he project’s influences into one style, and there’re also suddenly dropping musical lines in several songs. Listen to the music, just listen without dividing it into different styles-that’s all what I can recommend to a listener .
Then Manu began to think about live performances. That’s what he says about it: “At this time, I met Nico from band ’Joy Disaster’, and Cyril from band ‘Dorcel’, both living in Paris at that time. They loved the music of ‘Camp Z’ and decided to help me to build a show together with JP. So this first live line-up was made of Nico guitar, Cyril bass, JP second guitar and me singing. But this was clear between us that ‘Camp Z’ would remain a solo project, this was just a live line-up. We gave two shows with this line-up”. After those gigs Manu began creation of the second project’s album. The album, called ‘Violent Memories’ was out in 2007. It’s the real pressed CD, signed by the label “Manic Depression Records’, and it is very important achievement of the project. In my opinion, this album is the best Manu’s work. In comparison with his previous works, ‘Violent Memories’ seems unified and conceptual work. Manu changed his vocals manner to less brutal and more melodic and ‘cold’. The music had also changed to less ‘style-divided’. But it does not mean that the songs are similar. The stuff has huge emotional differences. Slow and moody ‘Primitive Rebirth’ attracts the attention, the contrast of the music and the atmosphere of ‘Fight (Lethal Reaction)’. Some more songs are wanted to to be underlined, like ‘Lonesome Road to Nowhere’, which begins with nice acoustic intro with sampled backgrounds (sampled intros are rather typical for the album’s stuff), which slowly grows into depressive song about the useless of the life, which goes to nowhere; or the cover version of the ‘Warsaw’/’Joy Division’ song ‘(They) Walked in Line’, which exactly shows the project’s post-punk backgrounds, but keeps the ‘Camp Z’ style as well. And also I’ll make the accent on the re-recorded version of ‘Whats This World’. This version does express all the changes those are mentioned. And it has a kind of paradox: the second version became lighter, but didn’t loose its darkness.
After the release, Manu had several shows with the line up of him (bass, vocals) and JP (guitar), and then he began to work with the new stuff, which was released recently as the EP, called ‘Our World to Come’. This 6 track EP is a step back and a step forward as well. Id est , it has some echoes of the first project’s album, but also it seems not even unified but monolith work. That’s why it’wouldn’t to be correct to make an accent on single songs. And the unusual thing is that the EP doesn’t have intro, stops to seem so if consider the first song, called ‘Enter Darkness’ to the intro to the whole work. All the songs are 100% hits. Probably, they can also be used for dance, but it would be very dark and obscure dance….
So, in this EP Manu managed to combine by the incomprehensible way all his influences into something, what could be called an obscure mix of classical post-punk and contemporary post-industrial. That’s also wonderful to see that ‘Camp Z’ becoming more and more professional, especially if not forget that fact that all the recordings have been done by Manu at his home. Some ‘Camp Z’ songs were also released on different compilations, like ‘The Sexy Zombies Part 1’, ‘The Black Lodge Volume 1’, ‘Poisoned Dead Frogs’, recent Xmas compilation ‘Howly Night’ with unreleased ‘Camp Z’ track, and some others.
A few years ago Manu met Alien S Pagan through the internet, and when he got the information that Alien was moving to Paris with a band project (it was the time when Manu just finished the second ‘Camp Z’ album), he proposed to Alien S Pagan to join this band, called ‘The Cemetery GirlZ’, as the guitar player and Alien accepted it. In ‘The Cemetary GirlZ’ Manu also met another ex-Sleeping Children member Romeo (they knew each other only through the internet, because they took a part in the band in its different periods). The band rather quickly recorded the first demo at Manu’s home, and started doing gigs. ‘The Cemetary GirlZ’ could be called the brilliant in contemporary ‘goth’ music. The band’s style is characterized as Batcave/Coldwave, and it’s one of the best style characteristics of this music. The music of the band has rather typical minimalism of these styles, and its sound strongly reminds the 80’s, but sounds contemporary as well. It seems as the band has developed its original influences into their unique music with greatly supplemented Alien’s vocals. So if you didn’t hear ‘The Cemetary GirlZ’ yet, it can be strongly recommend to you.
Unfortunately, some time later Manu found himself too busy to be the sterling member of the band. “I do have other projects, ‘Camp Z’, the label, and more important I have a family, I have children, a job, and I am older than the others, so for me it is too complicated to tour, go play far away, etc”. So at the moment Manu plays with ‘The GirlZ’ just when he can, the band, in turn, has found another guitar player Little Spigaou, and there’ll be both guitar players in the future band’s debut album.
The other important part of Manu’s activity is the foundation of the netlabel ‘Zorch Factory Records’, which was born in April, 2008. “With the years, I started knowing more and more people, for real, and on the net, and a lot of bands in particular. And I realized, lots of these bands had demos, or free CDs. But it was not so easy to find them. So I decided to federate all these bands and records through one single website’, – Manu recalls. The label rather quickly became successful, because many bands were interested in their participation in it. There were plenty of interesting bands involved, such as ‘Joy Disaster’, ‘The Cemetary Girlz’, ‘Monozid’ and many others. At the moment, the label has thousands of legal exclusive downloads with the agreement of the bands. The next step of the label is proposing real CDs too. Manu already began doing it for his ‘Camp Z’, publishing its last EP as the limited edition CD too.
Manu is really interesting and active artist. For the recent time he had several gigs with ‘Camp Z’ and ‘The Cemetary GirlZ’. Also he’s working with the new stuff (some of new songs will be recorded with a live drummer). So it will be great to look after the development of his projects in the future. And perhaps the article should be finished with Manu’s words: ‘Well I would say that personally I do listen a lot to old stuff, not only 80′s, but also 70′s, 90′s… But what really attracts me is music that is original, that brings a change into music history. That’s why more than a specific period like the 80′s, I am really into movements like post punk, no wave, art punk. I really like bands such as ‘Suicide’, ‘Devo’, ‘DAF’, ‘PIL’, ‘Wire’… And so many more. Also stuff of today, more into synth punk. I like things that break the rules. I am not particularly nostalgic; I prefer to think like the post punk movement did: let’s rip it up and start again. The future is ours; the future is what we make. This is year 0 in music. Of course for me and all the scene today, it cannot be year 0 in music any more, because so many things have already been done! Almost everything in rock, punk and electronic music has been explored. But I think this is anyway the main thing I have in mind when writing music, do something of my own, even if the influences are here’.
Pall ‘Nattsol’ Zarutskiy
«Grave Jibes Fanzine»
