For the members of electronic band Zoogma, performing in Oxford is just another way the group is coming full circle.
Before touring, losing and gaining a few members, establishing a loyal fanbase and traversing the festival circuit every summer, Zoogma was a five-piece college band in Oxford.
Now, a four-piece made up of Ole Miss alumni Justin Hasting and Matt Harris and Memphis natives Ryan Nall and Brock Bowling, Zoogma is returning after four years to bring their electronic, genre-bending sound, now with inspiration from Mississippi’s music.
“Matt and I were in a blues band — that hill country stuff — when I was a freshman, and we did that for a few years,” Hasting said. “Then we went to festivals and started doing this kind of music, and now we’re finally realizing and experimenting with coming back to those blues ideas, funk music and hill country and bringing it along with (electronic).”
Harris and Hasting said they had the band, named Blackjack Hill, from 2005 to 2008. While Zoogma was an avenue to move away from the hill country blues style, Hastings and Harris agree that they are rooted in the sounds of the south.
“It feels really natural to us,” Harris said. “I feel like, in the studio it’s been an easy process, coming up with a lot of these ideas.”
The blues-inspired ideas have also embedded themselves in Zoogma’s upcoming album, which will be released in the next week, according to Hasting.
Zoogma’s roots also run deep in a lesser-known way in Oxford. The band performed, held after parties, and even hosted a charity blow-out with Moon Taxi for the Oxford-Lafayette Humane Society at the location known as the Cats Purring Dude Ranch. Then, their keyboardist occupied the place and the members of Zoogma dubbed it to be called the Farmhouse. They started spreading word about after-parties and shows and according to Hasting, “It started small and it just got insanely a lot.”
“The reason the Farmhouse worked is because we were getting our first songs together, and that place started as our rehearsal space,” Hasting said. “And then we were just like, ‘well, maybe we should throw parties.’ I think just naturally playing those late night shows, our music sort of followed suit with those kind of vibes.”
The property’s late-night music and party-drenched past helped shape the DJ influenced, electronic rock music Zoogma is known for now.
The group’s music can be accurately described as a fusion of genres or an expression of multiple ideas. The meaning of the word zeugma, in fact, is a figure of speech that can express two ideas, though one makes logical sense, or as Hasting defined it, “combining the real and unreal.” In a similar way, Zoogma combines the organic sound of musical instruments with electronic elements — and now facets of hill country blues.
Zoogma is back in the North Mississippi hill country to play a show in the town where it all started. Catch the band with electronic act Modern Measure at Proud Larry’s tonight.
“Now that we’re sort of coming full circle,” Harris said, ”We wanted to go back where the roots are… and let Oxford inspire us again.”
