Blog Archives
Video: Zola Jesus – Ash to Bone (Johnny Jewel Remix)
ZOLA JESUS:
– Teams up with WeTransfer for premiere of “Ash To Bone (Johnny Jewel Remix)”
– LP ‘Okovi: Additions’ out April 6th via Sacred Bones Records
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ZOLA JESUS – Soak
Sacred Bones is pleased to unveil ‘Soak,’ the second song from Zola Jesus’ forthcoming album Okovi, which is set for release Sept 8th. Furthering the intense narrative of Okovi, ‘Soak’ is written through the lens of serial killer’s victim, clinging to life and about to be dumped in the water.
“I was thinking about this crucial moment inside the victim’s mind, when she knows she’s going to die. She thinks back at her life and the futility of the decisions she made, when in the end her life would be cut short against her will,” says Zola Jesus of the track.
“What’s the point of trying to navigate life if you don’t even get to choose how it ends? Instead of letting her fate be determined by someone else, she takes back control and turns it around, so instead, in her mind, she is choosing to die. She lets the killer assist her in suicide, as she gets tossed into the water and slowly drowns.Through writing this song the story evolved within me, and I saw how it mirrored my own feelings inside.”
Listen to ‘Soak’ here:
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Zola Jesus – Exhumed
Zola Jesus announces her new album Okovi set for release Sept 8th via Sacred Bones Records, and shares the first single ‘Exhumed’. Zola Jesus is set to play a London show on Nov 7th at Village Underground with more European dates to be announced soon.
ARTIST STATEMENT:
Last year, I moved back to the woods in Wisconsin where I was raised. I built a little house just steps away from where my dilapidated childhood tree fort is slowly recombining into earth. Okovi was fed by this return to roots and several very personal traumas.
While writing Okovi, I endured people very close to me trying to die, and others trying desperately not to. Meanwhile, I was fighting through a haze so thick I wasn’t sure I’d find my way to the other side. Death, in all of its masks, has been encircling everyone I love, and with it the questions of legacy, worth, and will.
Okovi is a Slavic word for shackles. We’re all shackled to something—to life, to death, to bodies, to minds, to illness, to people, to birthright, to duty. Each of us born with a unique debt, and we have until we die to pay it back. Without this cost, what gives us the right to live? And moreover, what gives us the right to die? Are we really even free to choose?
This album is a deeply personal snapshot of loss, reconciliation, and a sympathy for the chains that keep us all grounded to the unforgiving laws of nature. To bring it to life, I decided to enlist the help of Alex DeGroot, who has been the only constant in my live band and helped mix the Stridulum EP back in 2010. It will be released on Sacred Bones, the closest group of people I’ll ever have to blood-bound family.
Nika Roza Danilova has been recording music as Zola Jesus for more than a decade. For the majority of that time, she’s been on Sacred Bones Records, and Okovi marks her reunion with the label.
Fittingly, the 11 electronics-driven songs on Okovi share musical DNA with her early work on Sacred Bones. The music on this record was written in pure catharsis, and as a result, the sonics are heavier, darker, and more exploratory. In addition to the contributions of Danilova’s longtime live bandmate Alex DeGroot, producer/musician WIFE, cellist/noise-maker Shannon Kennedy from Pedestrian Deposit, and percussionist Ted Byrnes all helped build the textural universe of these songs.
With Okovi, Zola Jesus has crafted a profound meditation on loss and reconciliation that stands tall alongside the great works of its genre. The album speaks of tragedy with great wisdom and clarity. Its songs plumb dark depths, but they reflect light as well.
Okovi tracklist:
1. Doma
2. Exhumed
3. Soak
4. Ash to Bone
5. Witness
6. Siphon
7. Veka
8. Wiseblood
9. NMO
10. Remains
11. Half Life
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Video: Zola Jesus – Hunger
Zola Jesus releases an equally statuesque and frenetic performance in the brand new video for third single “Hunger” off the critically acclaimed album TAIGA, out now on Mute. Director Allie Avital Tsypin / BANGS says, “The video for ‘Hunger’ is essentially a sculpture project…an exploration of a life form: both raw and refined. A negotiation between form and inner life, movement and stillness, desire and satiation. Working with Nika is always an honest and satisfying collaboration…it was really fun to interpret the song and Nika’s aesthetic sensibilities through film.”
The “Hunger” video features a newly mixed version of the track by Zola Jesus bandmate Alex DeGroot and Mute founder Daniel Miller and will be available digitally b/w B-Side “Compass” on February 10th 2015.
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Video: Zola Jesus – Dangerous Days
“Dangerous Days” is taken from Zola Jesus’ (real name: Nika Roza Danilova) forthcoming album TAIGA, out on October 6th 2014 on Mute.
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Zola Jesus – Dangerous Days
“Dangerous Days” is taken from Zola Jesus‘ new album “Taiga”, which will be released on October 6th 2014 on Mute. The track is available for free download here.
SERIALGK 