Nika Roza Danilova (born Nicole Rose Hummel ; April 11, 1989), known professionally by her stage name Zola Jesus , is an American singer, songwriter, and record producer. Her music has been noted for combining elements of electronic , industrial , classical , and goth . Born in Phoenix, Arizona , she spent her formative years in northern Wisconsin , where she began writing and recording music independently while attending college. During her second year of studies, she released two singles through the independent label Sacred Bones , followed by two EPs . Her debut album, The Spoils , was released in 2009.
31-512: Valusia is the fourth EP by American singer-songwriter Zola Jesus . It was released on October 15, 2010 on Sacred Bones Records . All tracks are written by Nika Roza Danilova, except where noted Zola Jesus After graduating from the University of Wisconsin–Madison , she released her second full-length record, Stridulum II (2010), followed by Conatus (2011). Her fourth album, Taiga (2014), released by Mute Records , marked
62-595: A collaboration with producer JG Thirlwell , was released through Sacred Bones. After having resided in Los Angeles for a period, Danilova found living in a large city was negatively impacting her ability to concentrate, and relocated to Vermont , followed by her native Wisconsin, before settling in Washington to begin completing her new record. On June 18, 2014, she announced the release of her fourth studio album, Taiga . This album, released by Mute Records , features
93-476: A departure from her previous releases, and featured a more prominent pop -influenced sound. Her fifth studio album, Okovi , was released in 2017. Nicole Rose Hummel was born April 11, 1989, in Phoenix, Arizona , where she spent her early years. Her parents are first-generation Americans, with combinations of Russian as well as German , Slovenian , and Ukrainian descent. Her grandparents immigrated to
124-464: A drummer with metal band Jex Thoth . Zola Jesus has also played with Former Ghosts . On Fever Ray 's 2010 European tour, she performed as a support act and also toured with The xx . In the late 2009 collaboration between Zola Jesus and Rory Kane took shape (as Nika+Rory), a demo being put out on MySpace. In March 2010, Zola Jesus released the Stridulum EP, named after the 1979 horror film of
155-472: A monster hit waiting for an advert to launch it," the critic Kitty Empire wrote. As Kyle Ellison of Drowned in Sound put it, "Most noticeably on Stridulum II , the vocals are placed slap bang in the middle of the mix... While influences are drawn largely from the same places as before, the instrumentation has been softened, the edges are rounded, and the sound is enhanced beyond a mere studio clean-up job," making
186-565: A more prominent pop influence than her previous releases, with Danilova drawing inspiration from popular vocalists such as Mariah Carey and Barbra Streisand . "I was a child of the Nineties," she commented. "I grew up on Britney Spears , the Spice Girls , and I was listening to a lot of vocal music. You know, divas — Mariah Carey, Aaliyah , Barbra Streisand — strong female vocals. [On this record] I wanted to be really confident in my voice, which
217-552: A spirit unable to cross over, forlorn and forsaken, reciting her litany of love and regret" even if "the slightness of sound occasionally threatens to undermine the record's fragile veil of magic". "She has a way with a lyric, the way that the greatest pop stars do, of saying something simple that could mean so much to so many – conveying the universal in one chorus or a snatch of verse," The Quietus reviewer wrote, again praising Danilova's voice. "It swallows you up, enraptures you. It, more than anything else in her impressive arsenal,
248-498: A sultry Goth delivery," According to the NME , Zola Jesus "wails like Kate Bush " on a music sometimes evoking Joy Division . Q magazine noted her for her "haunting vocals and swirling, electronic atmospherics... located midway between Florence Welch and Siouxsie and the Banshees ." She has also been compared to Nico , Lisa Gerrard of Dead Can Dance and Elizabeth Fraser of
279-499: Is an exciting project, and if Danilova keeps improving at this clip, her sophomore album proper will be simply incredible." The Fly made an emphasis on the artist's vocal performance: " Stridulum II ’s lyricism points to apocalypse and suffering, but is cradled gently in possibly the strongest vocal performance this year," wrote the reviewer, Euan Davidson. According to AU Magazine , this "spellbinding collection"'s hypnotic power "derives from Danilova's spectral vocal. She sounds like
310-484: Is pretty profound... She's sandblasted her songs clean of the lo-fi trappings of The Spoils, letting her incredible voice shine through the arrangements... The arrangements, too, are stripped back to essentials, often containing nothing more than a drum machine and some synth pads... The focus, therefore, is on the songs themselves, and they don't disappoint. Their simplicity, vulnerability and directness are well beyond Danilova's 21 years". Chad Parkhill concludes, "Zola Jesus
341-453: Is usually very intense." In 2017, Danilova relocated to her hometown of Merrill, Wisconsin, and built a home on her family's property. In September 2017, she returned to Sacred Bones to release her fifth studio album, Okovi , which she wrote after a protracted bout of depression. Prior to composing the album, Danilova said she spent time "watching movies, reading books, then I moved back to Wisconsin, started building my house, but mostly I
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#1733085299272372-440: Is very ambitious, very confusing and very beautiful. It's not a particularly well-made film, it's certainly isn't very linear and doesn't always make sense, but that's only because he is trying to do too much with it. At its centre is a battle between good and evil... Zola Jesus referred particularly to the scene when Goodness ( John Huston ) tries to rescue the film's heroine by "washing her bad side away" and when doves fall from
403-603: Is what drags you in and doesn't let you go. It's the voice of a diva in the truest sense of the word, a mix of Maria Callas and Florence Welch , designed to be sung wherever Danilova wants to go: opera houses or Glastonbury." The Uncut reviewer called "her sound... instantly transfixing", while The Observer , making parallels to " Siouxsie Sioux fronting the xx " and the "goth Florence Welch", argued that this album found Jesus "moving away from her avant-garde early recordings and embracing direct songwriting and pithier instrumentation, to arresting results". "'Night' sounds like
434-513: The Stridulum EP with three of the four songs from the Valusia EP. The cover art is modified from the cover of Stridulum . Stridulum II , the album that (according to Dazed & Confused magazine) "explores good and evil, extreme behaviour and how doing something small can make a big change" was inspired by Giulio Paradisi's 1979 film: I love Giulio Paradisi's Stridulum because it
465-481: The Cocteau Twins . Numerous Zola Jesus music videos have been directed by Canadian-American director Jacqueline Castel , including "Vessel," "Seekir," "Night," "Nail," and "Exhumed." Since 2012, Zola Jesus has collaborated with New York-based costume designer and wardrobe stylist Jenni Hensler , whose work can be seen in the videos for "Dangerous Days," "Seekir," and "Hunger," and who also co-directed
496-530: The Latin word for "moving forward," featured less electronic components than Danilova's previous records, and included cello, double bass, violin, and viola. "I just wanted to try out new ways to produce and different ways to write," Danilova commented. "And with this new record it's a lot more stripped down and there are way more acoustic elements as opposed to no acoustic elements ... I just wanted more breathing room, so people could insert their own experiences into
527-775: The 2018 Roadburn Festival in the Netherlands. It was initially made available via Bandcamp , and scheduled for a CD and double-LP release in June 2020. In 2021, Danilova was reported to be appearing on the podcast Storybound . Danilova has stated that she has been influenced by a number of singers and bands, including Ian Curtis , Lydia Lunch , Diamanda Galás , Throbbing Gristle , Swans , Bauhaus and Cristina . On her fourth album, Taiga , she mentioned mainstream pop artists such as Mariah Carey and Barbra Streisand as being influences on her vocal performance. Her style has been described variously as "commanded by ominous lyrics and
558-559: The EP but they didn't really, I don't think. When I feel like I've done something already I want to try something new, so at the time that the EP came out I already wanted to try new things and I didn't really want to revisit an old format," she added. For Stridulum II Zola Jesus consciously moved away from the lo-fi aesthetics of The Spoils into a sound that was better produced and clarified. "I just wanted to grow as an artist, I wanted to prove to myself that I didn't have anything to hide underneath
589-654: The French writer Émile Zola , and the Christian messiah . While studying at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, she debuted the singles "Poor Sons" on Die Stasi and "Soeur Sewer", released in 2008 by Sacred Bones Records, after which she transferred to the University of Wisconsin–Madison . In 2009, while still in college, she recorded her debut full-length The Spoils , released by Sacred Bones in July 2009. In 2010, she graduated from
620-543: The United States from Odesa , Ukraine, and settled in North Dakota . Honoring her ancestry, she formally goes by her Slavic name, Nika Roza Danilova. She has one older brother. During her childhood, she and her family relocated to Merrill, Wisconsin , where they lived on a rural property situated in 100 acres (40 ha) of forest. "I resented my parents for having moved me away from Phoenix because I thought Phoenix
651-501: The University of Wisconsin–Madison with a double major in French and philosophy . Then followed Tsar Bomba EP (on Troubleman), New Amsterdam compilation on Sacred Bones and an untitled, limited-edition vinyl split with Burial Hex (Aurora Borealis). For touring she recruited Dead Luke (synths), bassist Lindsay Mikkola and drummer Max Elliott. Later the line-up changed to Shane Verwey and Nick Turco (synth), Alex DeGroot, and Nick Johnson,
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#1733085299272682-460: The album as a "gorgeously ethereal soundscape of a thousand years of heartbreak unleashed into one might howl." Additionally, NME ranked it the seventh-best album of the year. In 2011, Danilova began composing her third full-length studio album, Conatus , which she co-produced with Brian Foote of Jackie-O Motherfucker and Cloudland Canyon . The album, released in September 2011 and named for
713-438: The fuzz. Sometimes it's easy to compromise talent when you're working with those frequencies because a lot of things get lost," she commented. "Manifest Destiny" was used in the trailer for Neill Blomkamp 's movie Elysium . NME gave the album 8 out of 10 and praised Danilova's classically trained voice as "the deadliest weapon in her arsenal" and called the album "dark masterpiece". According to Rave , " Stridulum II
744-689: The record "not the noisy, industrial sound of old with nicer production, but a collection of pop orientated songs with darker influences hidden beneath." According to BBC Music ' s Spencer Grady, Zola Jesus "has thrown back the veils of feral scuzz and grime that swamped many of her earlier recordings, a corollary of her love for early industrial music and power electronics" and achieved in some tracks "anthemic clarity and accessibility". Praising "the potency and inherent potential in Danilova’s voice", and mentioning These New Puritans , Siouxsie Sioux , Cocteau Twins and Florence Welch as points of reference,
775-650: The remix video for "Ash to Bone". She is a cousin of Minnesota Senator and former 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar . Stridulum II Stridulum II is the second full-length studio album release (although it is considered her first in the UK) by the American singer-songwriter Zola Jesus , released by the German label Souterrain Transmissions on August 23, 2010. The album combines all six songs from
806-662: The same name by director Giulio Paradisi. After the release Zola Jesus performed at the SXSW Festival, for her second time. The same year, she issued a second EP, Valusia , also released on Sacred Bones. In July 2010, a collaborative third EP LA Vampires Meets Zola Jesus , was released. A collaboration with Amanda Brown of Pocahaunted , this EP presented "a dingy, lower-than-lo-fi sound and very little of what one would call traditional songwriting," according to Larry Fitzmaurice of Pitchfork . Danilova followed these three EPs with her second full-length album, Stridulum II , which
837-496: The sky. "That particular scene and the score are both incredibly striking pieces of work. Moments of the score are used in my track Stradilum and I chose it to be the title of the album. It's a very empowering idea," the singer added. The original EP was not conceived as an album. According to Jesus, the songs came in later when Souterrain Division asked her for more tracks to make it full-length size. "I tried to make them fit in with
868-431: The song, their own feelings into the song, as opposed to me forcing it on them with the densest sound possible." Additionally, Danilova provided guest vocals on the song "Intro" by M83 from their 2011 album Hurry Up, We're Dreaming . She also sang on "New France" by Orbital , from their 2012 album Wonky . In August 2013, Versions , a set of neo-classical reworkings of previous tracks from Zola Jesus releases, in
899-439: Was just trying to give myself time to live, because you write an album, then you tour and you forget you are a human being, you become a gipsy in a way, so it has been important to me to give myself more time to live outside of the music." The album marked her first to feature guitar instrumentation. In May 2020, Danilova announced the release of her first live album, Live at Roadburn 2018 , which features 12 live tracks from
930-413: Was much more interesting than Wisconsin," she said. "It's a great place and it's very interesting there, beautiful." She attended Wausau West High School, and after, enrolled at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee to study business. She began recording music at home while still in college, using keyboards, drum machines and other instruments. Her performing name, Zola Jesus, is a compound derived from
961-560: Was released in August 2010, one month after LA Vampires Meets Zola Jesus . This album marked her feature full-length release in the United Kingdom, combining all six songs from the Stridulum EP (in a different sequence), along with three of the four tracks on the Valusia EP; the cover artwork is a slightly altered version of the artwork from the Stridulum EP. Laura Snapes of NME praised