Zola Jesus - Okovi - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

There is a way a voice can cut through the fascia of reality, cleaving through habit into the raw nerve of experience. Nika Roza Danilova, the singer, songwriter, and producer who since 2009 has released music as Zola Jesus, wields a voice that does that. When you hear it, it is like you are being summoned to a place that's already wrapped inside you but obscured from conscious experience. This place has been buried because it tends to hold pain, but it's also a gift, because once it's opened, once you're inside of it, it can show you the truth. Zola Jesus's new album, Arkhon, finds new ways of loosing this submerged, stalled pain. On previous albums, Danilova had largely played the role of auteur, meticulously crafting every aspect of Zola Jesus's sound and look. This time, she realized that her habitual need for control was sealing her out of her art. Arkhon sees Zola Jesus's first collaboration with producer Randall Dunn (Sunn O))), Earth, Mandy soundtrack, Candyman soundtrack) and with drummer and percussionist Matt Chamberlain, whose prior work appears on albums by Fiona Apple, Bob Dylan, and David Bowie. Arkhon runs the spectrum from songs whose weight lies in their bare simplicity, like InchDesire,Inch an elegiac piano composition about the end of a relationship that was recorded acoustically in a single take, to towering, groove-oriented tracks like InchThe FallInch and the tight, interlocking percussion and samples of a Slovenian folk choir in InchLost,Inch which propel narratives of collective despair and mutual comfort in kind. Through these turns, Arkhon reveals itself as an album whose power derives from abandon. Both it's turmoils and it's pleasures take root in the body, letting individual consciousness dissolve into the thick of the beat. Despite the darkness curled inside reality, there is power, too, in surrendering to what can't be pinned down, to t

Seven years ago, it was winter break at university in Madison, Wisconsin. There was a snowstorm that covered the city with a still white haze. Not a single person in the streets. I was sitting on my bed with a cheap keyboard and a computer, screaming into the void. I barely remember writing the songs. It was a chaotic point in my life. I had no time to think about process or intent. It was a purge. I do remember taking a break from recording, bundling up, and walking through the barren streets while listening to the demos I'd made. The world, at once, felt clear. These songs were a huge leap of faith back then. It was my first time singing without layers of distortion, echo, and reverb. It was the first time I peeled back the layers to find out what was at the core. I'm still on that path today, seeing how far I can push myself into unknown places, whether through clarification or destruction. It's like Stridulum's still here with me, underneath it all. -Nika Roza Danilova, June 2017

Soundtrack to a poolside scene at a Ramada Inn in Florida in 1987 on summer vacation with your family but you're a bored and stifled teenager who falls in love with every cute girl you see...' That is how Allene Norton, the founder of the synth-pop, 80's influenced project Cellars would describe her music. Phases, her second album out on Manifesto Records and produced by Ariel Pink is no exception. Recently reviewed by Pitchfork, giving the album a of 7 out 10, saying Phases sounds 'zapped straight from the sepia-toned dance floor of a long-forgotten high school prom. Nighttime Girl' the first single and video from Phases, according to Allene is the struggle of finding your own way in a new place, discovering who you are, and the dissonant feelings of being sure and unsure at the same time.'It's mix of fuzzy guitars and bendy synths brings to mind Neon Indian, and it's another strong piece of evidence in the Chillwave Will Never and Should Never Die case file.'