The Zorgs

CALGARY — Whether they know it or not, slacker punk trio The Zorgs might be writing the soundtrack for disaffected Millennials everywhere.

With songs, like the celebration to ennui “Too Much Time” and its repeating refrain “Gotta do, gotta do absolutely nothing!” The Zorgs’ fuck-it-all-until-tomorrow ethos embraces sleeping in and avoiding real life at all costs.

“Adulthood is scary and sucks because it’s not like anyone declares that you’ve made it and then everything’s easy from that point on,” says vocalist/guitarist Taylor Burgess. “I’m turning 28 this year. That means time is running out for me to join the 27 Club. I guess that fear of growing up has been coming out in my songwriting.”

Indeed it has. Their three-song cassette, Stop The World, featuring an image of someone puking milkshakes on the cover, includes “Stop the World from Spinning,” a scuzz-punk plea for time to stop entirely, along with “Did Someone Say Milkshake?” — a punchy pogo-pop number that has landed on campus radio charts in Winnipeg and Calgary.

The Zorgs, which also includes David Skene (of the Manic Shakes) on bass and Steph Kolbuck on drums, are the type that likes to “keep people guessing.” They recently changed their name from The Zags to The Zorgs (the same name as the alien race in Calvin and Hobbes, btw) for that reason alone, and you can expect a similar type of unpredictably to spill into their live shows.

“We have a lot of instrumentals where you can’t quite pinpoint the genre, because there’s two or three happening at once” says Burgess. “I like a lot of surf music, but I’ve also been listening to a lot of post-punk. People will have a lot of fun scratching their heads over that when we play.”

Elsewhere, the band just inked a deal with Winnipeg label Transistor 66, joining the dysfunctional family alongside a new crop of young bands.

“Art (Transistor) sought out a bunch of our peers at the same time that we got signed,” says Burgess. “We have bands like The Unbelievable Bargains, Surprise Party, M&M Meats, and Atomic Don and the Black Sunrise. It’s like this new generation of family.”

The Zorgs’ debut full-length, which they are currently recording at Collector Studio (The Thrashers, Surprise Party), will be out whenever they decide to finish it, but a few new digital singles are up now on their Bandcamp page, including the bratty middle finger-wagging track “How Many Fucks Do I Give?” - Beatroute

There’s zigging and zagging and, unfortunately, some people are swagging. When it comes to Taylor Benjamin Burgess, David Skene and Steph “what the fuck” Kolbuck and their band, The Zags, there’s no confusion. Forming in December of 2012, The Zags have been hiding away and only popping up to tease the city every once in awhile. Stylus met up with Taylor and David at a local Tutti Frutti and they told us some stuff.

Stylus: What are The Zags all about?
Taylor Benjamin Burgess: Right now we’re playing really poppy tunes. Really poppy/punk tunes. Not pop-punk. Kind of post punk. It was a really natural fit for us to start playing. We just started jamming. And what we’ve been jamming has been the direction we’ve headed so far. We’ve been pretty quiet about things.
David Skene: Yeah, I’m not like, beating anyone over the head with our band. We’ve actually been trying not to play a lot of shows for a couple different reasons. One, it keeps a show special and exciting. Also, it has like given us time to work on our sound and playing as a band in a way that you don’t get when you get heavy into playing shows. When you know what you’re doing, you just go right into shows. Shows end up taking up all your time.

Stylus: Once you’ve got more stuff are you going to play more shows?
TBB: I think we have a good pace right now.
DS: We just really wanted to get ready to record, that was the big thing for us for that time period. And who wants to play shows in the winter? It’s really cold.
TBB: I’m ok with how few shows we play.
DS: I like playing shows at non-traditional venues.
TBB: Not to rag on traditional venues, but you’re a band in a bar playing your music that sounds like rock and roll or punk. What is the draw for someone to see you? So we’re just trying to get outside of that little box.
DS: There’s only so many venues in Winnipeg that you can play. There’s still a couple that I haven’t played. There’s a couple that I can’t play again.
TBB: [laughs] Have you been banned from venues?
DS: Two or three. But the cool thing about playing non-traditional venues is it’s a different experience and the way things go is very different. It’s a different thing when you show up. You show up and you don’t know what’s going to happen. Is there a PA there? Are people going to be able to find this place? And then also the most important reason about not playing a traditional venue is it puts the focus on the music, not on alcohol sales. And there’s a focus in the audience that you just don’t get at a bar.

Stylus: Say hypothetically Taylor booked a show somewhere David was banned from. What would you do?
DS: Buy a fake moustache. A lot of the venues I’ve been kicked out of aren’t around anymore. Red Cactus I got thrown out Uncle Phil style. They grabbed me by the strap of my pants and threw me out the back door. And then Manic Shakes accidentally put a hole in the stage at The Cheer, so we can’t go back there.

Stylus: So your first release in on cassette?
TBB: This is our first release. We had some songs up on Souncloud but those are just demos to let people know what we sound like and to make it easier to book shows.
DS: When we started we had a meeting where we set a bunch of goals and one of them was to do a cassette release. Our sound just feels better on cassette tape. It’s not an ironic “oh nobody listens to casettes anymore, let’s release it on that because it’s so anachronistic.” We’re living in a time where the physical media you release your songs on is either a) meaningless or b) secondary, cause hardly anybody is actually going to interact with it in it’s physical medium.



Stylus: Any plans for the future other than the album?
DS: One of the philosophies of The Zags is that just when you think you know who we are we’re going to zag.
TBB: We want to record with Riley Hill again. He’s so awesome.
DS: Good producers have a little bit of Jedi mind reading power.
TBB: Yeah, he gets us.
DS: And sometimes they’re also a little Batman with being the producer you need, not the producer you want. We brought him here (Tutti Futti) and we made him an ice cream Sunday. We put the first spoonful in his mouth, and we said, “We want our album to sound how that tastes.”
TBB: And he’s doing it and it’s awesome. It’s pretty sweet and sugary.

Stylus: Anything on behalf of Steph?
DS: If Steph was here she’d be saying something like, “Oh, you know, stuff.”
TBB: She keeps getting complimented that she just sticks bubblegum in her mouth and plays drums. It’s the best act The Zags have going right now, is when she does her spaced out bubblegum chew.

Keep an eye out for the cassette release show of The Zags coming up May 24th at the Purple Room - Stylus Magazine

Cold chillin’ in the booth at Lou’s Cafe, Winnipeg’s Zags plot their next move. These prairie-punk slackers are fiending for the slurp, fueling up for their next gig at the sock hop. With a sugar-rush punch of friendly fuzz, this trio pogos in style like a landlocked Les Savy Fav. - Weird Canada