Zoar
ZOAR is the musical ensemble of composers Michael Montes and Peter Rundquist. Guided by poetic inspiration, ZOAR combines the sounds of nature and industry with guitar, cello and synthetic textures to create instrumental atmospheric music that stimulates the mind to a succinct visual experience.
Michael Montes, keyboardist and ZOAR's main composer, began teaching himself to play the piano at the age of seven and later dropped out of medical school in order to make music his life's work.
Peter Rundquist, guitarist and ZOAR co-composer, left his job on Wall Street to pursue music full time. Working out of a commercial music studio he began experimenting with the multi-layered guitar textures, which are now a prominent feature of the ZOAR vocabulary.
Using classical and contemporary authors for inspiration, ZOAR crafts their songs with unorthodox frameworks and changes. Like Edgar Allen Poe, ZOAR compositions drip with texture and mood leading the listener to uncharted areas of the subconscious. Using industrial atmospherics or found natural sounds as a base – the lonely sound of trains at night, thunderstorms, the sound of waves crashing on the beach – their distinctive audio storytelling expands to include traditional musical stimuli of cello, piano and guitar which enliven the senses and enlighten the mind. With only a song title to go on, listeners create their own hallucinogenic visual inspired by the piece. In this way, ZOAR becomes our guide to other worlds that we create
In 1997 ZOAR released their debut CD Cassandra through Point Music, a Philip Glass/Polygram joint venture to overwhelming critical success. Neil Strauss of the New York Times summed it up best, proclaiming ZOAR as: "Masters of the cinematic instrumental."
Their live performances are not to be missed. Kyle Gann of The Village Voice found ZOAR's live show to be "conjuring as finely calculated an atmosphere as I've heard any ambient music elicit. The group's devices were simple: smoke machines, swirling geometric figures of light, sophisticated synth timbres, thunder, and unexpected chord changes that reoccurred until you finally learned to listen for them...superb at setting up a darkly dramatic background..." Fans were ready and waiting for more.
Finally released in 2001 by Middle Pillar, their "lost album", In the Bloodlit Dark, represents a large step forward in the development of ZOAR. ITBD is filled with jeweled stories from the subconscious. From the haunted house horror of "Wisteria" to the serial killer sensibility of "Child of God" to the dark epic tone of "The Beauty of Obscenity", ZOAR has merged the beautiful and the sinister for a truly unique listening experience.
Between the release of Cassandra and the excavation of the In the Bloodlit Dark, Michael Montes has worked extensively in the areas of television and cinema, composing scores for several up and coming independent films including Joan Stein's "One Day Crossing" which was nominated for an Academy Award in 2001. Several of his pieces are also included in the permanent collection of New York's Museum of Modern Art. His work for the PBS documentary "Secrets of the Dead" was remixed and added first on the Middle Pillar "Butoh" compilation, and then a year later was given a final home as an endnote of closure on ITBD.
In November 2002 ZOAR released their third album, the epic and powerful Clouds Without Water. For their ultimate artistic release the band assembled a stunning array of talented vocalists, including Brendan Perry (Dead Can Dance), Matt Johnson (Matt Johnson), Jennifer Charles (Elysian Fields) plus newcomer Julie Comparini, and Tony Levin (King Crimson) guesting on bass. Clouds Without Water is an important warning bell of a hopefully avoidable dystopian future. A remix by Carmen Rizzo of the track "Ashes Falling" appeared on the 2003 Middle Pillar compilation Eclectica 2
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