What does Conatus mean?
Conatus means a lot of things to me, but for the sake of this record it means an effort to continue to exist, to progress, to move forward. I had become completely obsessed with deconstructing the way I make music and to figure out different ways to approach it; in a sense to turn myself inside out and see what would happen, in the hope that I would learn new skills.
What were you trying to achieve with this album?
I had an extremely vivid world within my head, where I wanted all of these sounds to coexist. I kept having these primal images; just quite strange landscapes and shapes I couldn’t shake. The sound of this record comes from a very visual, physical and psychological place that I don’t really know how to describe in musical terms. Working on this record, I felt this really empowering curiosity for music, something I hadn’t felt since my earlier records.
How would you describe your sound and style?
I like to work with sounds that are indistinguishable Coach bags outlet, when many different instruments or sounds can blend together to make one solid drone that can move and carry the song. I think my music and my style are connected in a way where they’re both trying to express the same things, or make sense of something greater.
What’s with the metaphor of the moth life cycle in this video?
Because “Vessel” was born from many surreal dreams I was having while writing the record, the white-banded sphinx moth was used to symbolize the otherworldliness of dreams, secret knowledge and an underlying metamorphosis that this particular moth goes through in underground desert chambers.
You’re about to embark on a North American tour. After, do you see yourself on track for Year 4 Coach bags outlet, with album No. 4?
I will be touring endlessly next year, and then I will work on my next record. This will be the first record where I give myself no deadline, so when it will be ready I do not know.
This is your third album in three years. Did you feel any pressure with “Conatus” that you maybe didn’t feel with your first two records?
You’ve said before that this album was for you cathartic.
In the early stages, I wanted this record to feel more pulled away, more immediately entertaining and less overwhelmed by my own emotional intensities. But it quickly became just that. It is an entirely introspective record, where I ended up forcing myself to analyze every last detail of my skill as a musician, and that kind of avalanched into me dissecting my own fabric as a person. I started asking myself, Why do I have these habits? Why can’t I break out of certain chord progressions, keys, tempos, lyrics, colors, moods, feelings, fears, rituals, etc., and it just pushed me into this place where I felt like no matter what I do it will never be different — as if I have these chains on my hands keeping me from becoming better. Then I started to feel this rising frustration, like, Why do I have to think about these things so much? Why can’t music just be fun and light? Why does it always have to be a war for me? I can say there was growth at the end, but the process was emotionally exhausting and made me very unwell.
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Are you playing a gig in your hometown of Madison?
I don’t have any plans to play in Madison currently. Last time I played there it was one of the worst attended shows in all of my tour. I have always had a much better response outside of Madison, even when I lived there.
You refer to your “opera voice” in other articles as if it is this distant part of your past. Do you plan to ever return?
I would like to return, if only because it would mark a great accomplishment within myself. My voice is one of the most vulnerable relationships I have with anything in the world, and I think if that were repaired I could let go of a lot of fixations.
Directed by Jacqueline Castel
Zola Jesus appeared onto the music scene three years ago as quietly and effective as a specter in the still of the night. With an unprecedented voice large enough to fill an opera house, Jesus, a petite 22-year-old from Madison, Wis., has proven to be anything but run-of-the-mill Midwestern. In fact, the Russian-American opera-trained singer, who is fixated on loneliness, which she translates through her gloomy, darkwave drones, is much better received outside of her hometown. (“Even when I lived there,” she says.) Misunderstood? Sure, but not just by others, she admits. The Moment caught up with the L.A.-based siren, née Nika Roza Danilova, to talk about her new video for “Vessel,” from her introspective third album, “Conatus” (Sacred Bones), out on Oct. 4, and why they both shook her straight to the core.
You’re in the New Mexican desert here.
Because this song for me was so visceral, the video was especially exciting for me. To finally put this thing in a physical context Coach bags outlet, it was so gratifyingly easy. I wanted snow very badly at first, to find maybe a frozen tundra or a vast white space. I wanted to shoot the record in Nunavut or northern Sweden, but Jacqueline [Castel] told me about the desert in New Mexico, which was much closer, and that felt even more perfect than anything I could have imagined. I have a memory of standing alone on a dune, with the rest of the crew very far away. I could only hear the wind and myself breathing in the middle of an afternoon sandstorm. Green chiffon was tied to all of my limbs and it would blow all over me, envelop me and then try to break free. … It was at that moment that I felt the music become real, all around me. Even with nothing but the wind as the sound source, I could hear it.
I would be lying if I didn’t say I felt pressure. But it was pressure from myself and from my expectations of how I wanted to grow and what I wanted my next record to exhibit. I realized pretty quickly that what I anticipated to make turned into something completely different — but I needed that.
Can you give us some background on the song “Vessel”?
This song was written very quickly, almost compulsively. I had a very strong feeling inside about this song, it felt very sharp and clear but at the same time there was a stutter trying to rise from the mud. This song in particular was like the final sum of the disorder I had to fight through in order to make this record. It was a great exhale but also kind of the peak of my sickness.
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