“Darkness is something that I’m battling,” says Zola Jesus. “Darkness is a tunnel with an end. It’s not bottomless. So I try to make it productive.” With a childhood spent quite literally in the middle of nowhere, Nika Roza Danilova channeled her isolation into escapist yearnings. Her first experiments on a four-track recorder — with space only for her layered vocals, basic instrumentation and a rhythm track derived from jangling keys or thrashing on pots — convinced the good folks at Sacred Bones to secure her the first Zola Jesus 7" release at the tender age of 18. Subsequently, she's developed a unique formula that bundles her classically trained vocal theatrics, philosophy-informed songwriting and goth and art-rock leanings into a haunting pop template. This play on formal opposites also inspired her moniker, which is a compound of naturalist writer Émile Zola and bold Christian symbolism.
