Zola Jesus on new album Okovi

Nika Roza Danilova, the musician behind the Zola Jesus moniker, has an extraordinary ability to conjure musical drama – but her sixth album is strictly personal. Her songs have always been stormy and theatrical, with the power to fell a forest, or fill an opera hall. She’s a classically trained singer, and her self-produced albums of electronic, gothic pop are charged with a surreal electricity. Her new album Okovi explores extremely private trauma and, while writing it, Danilova was struck by lightning.

“I still don’t know if I’m okay?” She exhales, laughing. “I mean, it’s never happened to me before. It was raining and thundering, and I was in my basement, with concrete floors. I touched my desk and all of a sudden I got shocked. To the point where it knocked me onto the floor. It shocked my entire body! Instantaneously. It was the most terrifying... I’ve never felt anything so intense, physically, like that. I still don’t really understand it.”

Raised in Wisconsin, Danilova released her first full-length album in 2009. She remarks that the life of a solo artist can be difficult and introspective: “You kind of live in your own head, but almost to a fault.” But still, she prefers to work in isolation, and her albums have an earthy connectedness with the natural world. “I need solitude. Otherwise I feel like the energy around is so overpowering that I can’t really listen to the inside. So much about writing is listening to the inside, and I need to be alone to get there.”

For Okovi, she took several self-imposed writing retreats in the forests near her home in Merrill, WA. “I guess I wanted the [record] to feel womb-like – really immersive and atmospheric, because that’s how I feel being in the woods. You feel protected, in a weird way, like everything’s around you. It was far enough that I could get dropped off and wouldn’t be able to get home on my own.”

The majority of Zola Jesus’ discography has been published by Sacred Bones, a hallowed label home to artists like Blanck Mass and Jenny Hval. Over eight years, her sound has swelled: the sparse, lo-fi dread of her debut, The Spoils (2009), grew increasingly complex, and Conatus (2011) became a breakout record of sorts, confirming her status as a visionary electronic musician and earning her a place on stages all over the world. Danilova takes pride in writing and producing every Zola Jesus record, but Taiga (2014) saw a slight change in procedure.

Temporarily leaving behind the home comforts of Sacred Bones for Mute, the British label which launched Depeche Mode, Nick Cave and Goldfrapp, Danilova was determined to push harder. “I wanted to fulfil potential, in a way,” she reflects. “I wanted to do everything I could so that Taiga was objectively good. I’m very masochistic and I’m hard on myself, so I wanted to say, this is ‘done’. It’s not suffering from production, or technique. I did everything I could do.”

Co-produced with Dean Hurley, a regular collaborator with David Lynch, Taiga is a lush, eerie and thoroughly polished record. It’s a testament to Zola Jesus’ technical talent and towering ambition, but she still felt something wasn’t quite right: “I just missed the atmosphere I used to work with? I think I lost that, a little bit. So now I’m trying to put everything together. I’m ready to move forward and make a statement that doesn’t have to do with perfecting anything. It’s more about catharsis.”

After moving back to Wisconsin from Seattle, Danilova built a house with the help of her uncles and father, on a patch of land already owned by her relatives. She reunited with Sacred Bones, too (“They’re just my family”), and touching base in these ways helped Danilova to zero in on “what’s really important”. Zola Jesus’ sixth album finds comfort in returning home, and tackles two unanswerable questions: life and death.

The album’s title is a Slavic word for shackles, and is used to start an emotional, existential discussion about the purpose of our time on earth. Written in response to the struggles of those close to her, these songs are stories of life threatening battles with mental illness, and of finding acceptance in terminal disease. Such sensitive material can be tricky to navigate, and Danilova explains that writing about experiences felt by other people “makes it very delicate... It’s precious and I’m very protective over them. This record, more than any other, is really fragile.”  

Okovi is an overwhelming listen. A culmination of all that Danilova's learned from her previous records, it swings from hi-fi to DIY, and veers between thunderous industrial crashes, slick pop and earthy, heartbroken balladry. First single Exhumed begins with a rush of strings, and an abrasively morbid image: 'Bury the tongue between the teeth.' Relentless, hammering percussion drives a cyclical narrative of rebirth, and feels as severe as an icy shower. The video to the track, directed by Jacqueline Castel, is a nightmarish accompaniment: “I wanted it to be very foggy, black and white, almost like inkblots,” recalls Danilova. “I wanted it to feel other-worldly, and as maniacal as I felt when I was writing the song. Living out a dream.”

These are excruciatingly huge emotions performed on a mountainous scale, and not one song on Okovi flinches from inflicting emotional damage: Witness is a stripped-back gut punch that tries to dissuade a person from self-harm, while Siphon speaks to those consequences with unflinching detail. On the surface, Soak might sound like the record’s most radio-friendly earworm, but look deeper and you’ll find a story that imagines the final, empowering thoughts of a serial killer’s victim. To realise the full scale of the album, Danilova invited cellist Shannon Kennedy (Pedestrian Deposit) and percussionist Ted Byrnes to experiment over her work: “I said, just play with it and give me whatever comes out. I like that as a way to add texture that I know I wouldn’t be able to add myself. They interpret the music in such a different way, they bring such different shades, and it adds this thickness.”

After the album was completed, Danilova played it to long-term live band member Alex DeGroot. “I get to this point where I feel stuck,” she explains. “I need an outside perspective. I enjoy bringing someone in at the end of the process, to tighten it up and to almost encourage me that I have something. I have a hard time believing in myself and in my own skills, and Alex was very therapeutic. He’s almost like a vessel; he knows me so well that it’s seamless.”

Sharing these stories with collaborators is one matter, but opening up an album like Okovi to public scrutiny is a potentially painful act in itself. Danilova is resolute that previous, “goofy” goals of topping the charts mean nothing, now. “This album has already served its purpose for me," she states. "But if I can help somebody else that would make it even more worth it. That’s the only reason I’d make these songs public. But for anyone to be negative, or critical? There’s no room for that.

“Okovi’s not about any sort of whimsical ambition, or excitement for the public. Music is my way to connect with people, and it’s intense for me. It’s about being able to connect purely on emotion, which is universal – and it’s important that you don’t need to be part of a cool club to get it. It should be visceral.

“And it's more difficult than usual, because I’m writing about other people. Usually I have more control over how much I want to share about myself, but because I’m choosing to put it out there, this time I’m a little bit more open about my own struggles. So I don’t want to know about people’s critical responses to these songs. To me it’s so personal. It’s not about good or bad, or if you like it. It already serves its purpose to me, and the people in my life. It’s not up for judgement. It’s protected.”