Zoo Strategies
Zeus Tragedies (Tetra)

Ask a room of music fans who the Chicago guitar greats are and you’ll no doubt come up with praise for Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, and other classic blues figures. The four men of Zoo Strategies might well agree, but their lists could just as easily lean toward more obscure fretboard adventurists plucked from the ’90s Midwestern emo scene. Cribbing from the magic bags of Braid’s Bob Nanna, Cap’n Jazz virtuoso Victor Villarreal, and others, Zeus Tragedies is full of intricate patterns, dizzying runs, and herky-jerky melodies that would have gone over gangbusters at a Clinton-era gig at the Windy City’s Empty Bottle.

That said, opener “Hot Avalanche” doesn’t find the instrumental EP jumping headfirst into skewed six-stringing. Rather, it eases into consciousness via a spacious sea-waltz pace before Trevor Wong and Daniel Baxter’s sanguine and swift countermelodies tie the arrangement into a sheepshank knot of sound. “Magic Beach” is likewise a speechless chantey, mixing a fluid trickle of guitar on one speaker and bouncing, tapped-out tones on the other. Following a logjam of number-crunching shifts in rhythm, the busy tune is allowed to breathe over a cathartic, crashing wave of cymbals and open chords.

The lack of vocals feels especially apparent by the end of the five-track cycle. If, however, you were big on the frontman-free postrock of long-gone acts like Pele or Ghosts and Vodka, it’ll be comforting to hear Zoo Strategies keeping that spirit alive.