by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

It's only appropriate that Zombi, the duo of Steve Moore (bass, keys) and A.E. Paterra (drums, keys), should hail from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Their band name is taken from the Italian release of Dawn of the Dead, the 1978 zombie flick by Pittsburgh's renowned indie filmmaker George Romero. Dawn of the Dead ruled not only because of its graphic gore, intelligent script and subversive bite, but also its eerie, effective synthesizer-rock score by Euro-proggers Goblin. That creepy, high-tech sound, echoed in many Italian "giallo" films of the era and in the darker corners of late-period prog rock, has come back to haunt us, thanks to Moore, Paterra and their wicked analog gear, strictly from that early-'80s sweet spot between the crude, psychedelic, Moog-era '60s and the too-slick '90s.

Thing is, with their latest release - which is on, um, Release, the experimental sub-label of heavy-handlers Relapse - the pair have gone further than the horror-score vibe. A whole lot farther further. It's called Cosmos (yup, a nod to Carl Sagan), and it pays expansive tribute to all your favourite gaseous clusters and heavenly bodies. Then again, these guys could do a tribute to knitting or penicillin or the Dewey decimal system, and man, it would sound fucking cool.

Mirror: There's no questioning the influence that George Romero's films have had on you two, but do the people of Pittsburgh in general recognize him as a hometown hero?

A.E. Paterra: Yeah, Pittsburgh always embraces anybody who does anything in the city. People really have great admiration for him and what he did, that he highlighted the city in some of his films. He filmed everything in Pittsburgh, and people really appreciated that. Pittsburgh is always the underdog city, and anytime something from that city does well, it's always a very big deal. It was really neat to know that the places where those movies were filmed, we could drive there and see the locations.

M: You've created your own horror movie soundtracks, three of them - if the short Simulations is in fact horror.

AEP: It's not, necessarily. It was a small school-project film by a friend of ours. We're going to try to release a lot of that stuff, that and the Home Sick soundtrack, in the future, because we really like the material written for them.

M: I would imagine that doing a soundtrack has demands, limitations and frustrations that a straight-up, unattached Zombi album wouldn't.

AEP: Well, actually, there's a lot more freedom sometimes in doing a soundtrack. We're able to do a lot of things, really indulge ourselves - things we wouldn't necessarily bring into the band element, things that are definitely more horror-themed. For our last soundtrack, Murder Set Pieces, we did a techno song, we did a hair-metal rock song - it allows us to write in different styles that we wouldn't do on the band end of things. There are some frustrations - we might spend three hours working on a piece of music, and maybe it's not what the director wanted, so we have to go back and rearrange it. But everyone we've worked with so far has allowed us to do what we want. Our experience has been really good. I have to say, there have been fewer frustrations than great moments.

With the Unireverse and Patrick Watson
at le Local on Friday, April 1, 10 p.m., $8

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