Arkhon (Indie Exclusive) | Eco Mix LP
Zola Jesus | Arkhon (Indie Exclusive) - Eco Mix LP
Release date: 01.07.2022
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 thatÕs already wrapped inside you but obscured from conscious experience. This place has been buried because it tends to hold pain, but itÕs also a gift, because once itÕs opened, once youÕre inside of it, it can show you the truth. Zola JesusÕs 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 JesusÕs sound and look. This time, she realized that her habitual need for control was sealing her out of her art. Arkhon sees Zola JesusÕs first collaboration with producer Randall Dunn (Sunn O))), Earth, Mandy soundtrack, Candyman soundtrack) and with drummer and percussionist 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 ÒDesire,Ó an elegiac piano composition about the end of a relationship that was recorded acoustically in a single take, to towering, groove-oriented tracks like ÒThe FallÓ and the tight, interlocking percussion and samples of a Slovenian folk choir in ÒLost,Ó 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 its turmoils and its 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 canÕt be pinned down, to the wild unfurling of the world in all its unforeseeable motion. That letting go is the crux of Arkhon, which marks a new way of moving and making for Zola Jesus.
