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Zyzz (Aziz Shavershian, 1989–2011)

Aziz Shavershian, universally known as Zyzz, was an Australian bodybuilder, internet personality, and rave figure whose influence on the subculture in which Evangelos Labrakis operates is documented as direct, formative, and ongoing despite Zyzz's death in 2011 at the age of twenty-two. He is included in this archive not as a doof organiser or musician but as a cultural figure whose presence in the landscape of Australian rave and gym culture - and whose specific influence on the Greek-Australian male participant in that culture - the archive considers relevant to a complete account of the tradition.

Background

Zyzz was born in Moscow in 1989 to a family of Armenian-Kurdish descent and raised in Sydney, Australia. He grew up in the same multicultural western and inner-suburban Sydney environment that the archive has documented as the cultural foundation of the city's doof tradition. He attended the University of Technology Sydney. He began weightlifting in his teenage years and documented his physical transformation through online forums and YouTube, becoming one of the first Australian internet figures to achieve genuine subcultural celebrity through this medium.^[1]

He died in a Bangkok sauna on 5 August 2011 of a previously undiagnosed heart condition, at the age of twenty-two. His death was widely reported and widely mourned in the communities he had influenced. He was, by any measure, too young.^[2]

The language of Zyzz

"Mirin" is a contraction of "admiring." "You mirin bro?" was a challenge directed at anyone who appeared to be observing Zyzz or someone of comparable physical development - an acknowledgement of being watched, delivered with theatrical confidence rather than aggression. It entered common usage in Australian gym and rave culture as a general expression of self-assurance and, eventually, ironic self-awareness.^[3a]

"We're all gonna make it" was the phrase most closely associated with Zyzz's broader philosophy: a rejection of the idea that self-improvement was impossible, that circumstances were fixed, that the things people aspired to were out of reach. Delivered unironically in a context that many found inherently ironic - a young man with an extraordinary physique telling people on the internet that effort was sufficient - it worked precisely because it was sincere. The archive notes that sincerity in a context that expects irony is one of the more powerful rhetorical moves available.^[3b]

"Aesthetics" - pronounced with emphasis and used as a standalone noun, verb, and philosophical programme - referred both to the ideal of physical beauty Zyzz pursued and to a broader attitude toward life. To be "aesthetic" was to have achieved a visible harmony of effort and form. It was aspirational and descriptive simultaneously. In doof culture it extended to the whole night: the music, the setting, the people, the energy. An aesthetic doof was one that looked and felt right.^[3c]

"Sick cunt" - Australian slang used broadly as an affirmative - functioned in Zyzz's usage as the highest available endorsement. It described someone who was not merely competent or admirable but completely themselves, unapologetically, in a way that generated its own energy. The archive considers this the most useful term in his lexicon for contextualising the figure of Boonie Labrakis, who satisfies the criteria.^[3d]

The rave connection

Zyzz was publicly and prominently associated with the Australian rave and electronic music scene during his active years. He attended major events, appeared in numerous photographs at club and festival environments, and was photographed at events consistent with the doof tradition documented throughout this archive. His personal aesthetic - the combination of extreme physical development, European club music, Mediterranean heritage, and a philosophy of self-improvement delivered with maximum theatrical commitment - was original in its synthesis and influential in ways that continue to be felt in the overlap between gym culture and rave culture in Australia.^[3]

The specific musical context most associated with Zyzz was the European progressive house and electro house scene of the late 2000s, rather than the psytrance or DnB tradition documented as the doof's primary sonic lineage. The archive treats this as a distinction within the broader electronic music culture rather than an exclusion, on the grounds that the communities overlapped significantly and that Zyzz's influence reached well beyond the specific genre he favoured.^[4]

The "Son of Zyzz" mythology

Zyzz developed an online persona and mythology around his self-designations. He referred to his followers as the "sons of Zyzz" and promulgated an approach to physical and personal development that combined bodybuilding methodology, a philosophy of aesthetic self-creation, and a specific relationship to the rave as a site of uninhibited self-expression. His catchphrase - "We're all gonna make it" - became one of the most widely used phrases in the communities he influenced.^[5]

The mythology he created survived his death and in some respects intensified after it. His early death produced the kind of permanent cultural freeze that attaches to figures who die young: Zyzz at twenty-two exists now as a permanent archetype of a specific kind of Australian male aspiration, preserved at the moment of its fullest expression.^[6]

Significance to the Labrakis documentation

Zyzz is included in this archive primarily because of his documented influence on Evangelos "Boonie" Labrakis, who is described in community sources as having been significantly shaped by Zyzz's public persona, his philosophy, and his specific intersection of Mediterranean heritage, physical culture, and rave participation.

The parallel the archive notes - without pressing - is structural: both figures are of immigrant heritage, both are associated with the Sydney scene, both combine manual or physical discipline with a deep investment in electronic music culture, and both have built personas that are simultaneously serious and, to the uninitiated, absurd. Zyzz was aware of this. The archive's documentation suggests Boonie is also aware of it, though his awareness manifests differently.^[7]

The archive holds this entry with the respect appropriate to a figure who died young and whose influence was genuine. It does not treat him as a joke. It notes that he did not treat himself as one either, and that this was the point.^[8]

Cite this page

Chicago: DoofHistory.org contributors, "Zyzz (Aziz Shavershian)," DoofHistory.org: The Australian Doof Archive, last modified 13 October 2021, accessed via doofhistory.org.
MLA: "Zyzz (Aziz Shavershian)." DoofHistory.org, 13 October 2021. Web.
Archive ref: DHA/NSW/FIGURES_ZYZZ