Zola Jesus may have a few releases to her name already, but has only recently come to my attention. I suspect this is true of many listeners, as her latest release, 'Stridulum II' (an expanded European version of the US-only EP, 'Stridulum'), has really got her noticed, and an explosion of press coverage. Rightly so, too. All the more reason why tonight's show was a must-see: not only did it offer a rare opportunity to see her in the UK, but in a small bar venue, with no entry fee. How can it be possible?
Before the main event, Model Warships tortured us for a while. There's no polite way of putting it: he was absolutely bloody awful. His guitar playing style isn't avant-garde, it's just painfully bad, all over the shop. Out of time and out of tune, if his guitar style was cringe-inducing, it was nothing compared to the atonal yodelling vocals. It was a case of employing not so much as a soft / loud dynamic as a case of whispering and mumbling for a while before suddenly braying like a buffalo about how everyone hates him. 'Put down the guitar and get back to wanking,' was the advice one of my friends said he would have offered (rather embarrassingly, as we discovered at the end of the set that the girl standing in front of me was the guy's girlfriend. No wonder she looked awkward. Hey ho).
It was getting busy and rather warm by the time the magnificently strange The Horn the Hunt took to the stage. Ostensibly a male / female electronica duo, their stage presence is nothing if not eye-catching. Joseph (synths and bass) is tall, stocky and balding. Claire (vocals and synths) is diminutive and intense-looking. Dressed in mantles made of animal skins, they looked like they'd stepped out of a historical reconstruction from a documentary. The hunting theme doesn't end there, either: with song titles like 'The Old Hunting Ground' and 'Before there Were Knives,' one could have been forgiven for expecting some kind of Medieval LARP-folk rather than the intense and compelling brand of atmospheric electro that's sparse yet dense at the same time. Jospeh uses the bass in the way most would a lead guitar, with some intricate fretwork providing an extremely unusual dynamics. The marching drums and textured drones of 'Wild Dogs' provided a real standout in a remarkable set suggested hints of Portishead, Gary Numan and early DAF in their experimental leanings. Weird, but very, very good.
For everything that exists, there is its opposite: yin and yang. To this end, Zola Jesus is the counterpoint to Lady Ga-Ga, her music being a vortex of darkness, an ice-cold distillation of density and atmosphere. Zola Jesus, aka Nika Roza Danilova, may be extremely petite, but has an immense voice, not to mention a vast presence. She doesn't utter a word throughout the entire set, save for in order to announce the last song, but this aloofness only amplifies her untouchable, other-worldly intensity. sometimes she paces back and forth along the front of the stage, others in little circles in small, quick steps, as though locked into the music with a focus no-one should attempt to interfere with. Even as she stands atop the speakers, or paces through the audience, it's about control and distance, not contact and closeness. Meanwhile, the two art-nerd dudes behind the keyboards keep their heads down and send shards of glacial synth sounds shivering through the PA.
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The obvious comparisons - to Kate Bush in terms of overt eccentricity, and to Florence Welch for her remarkable lung capacity - have been made many times already, but they are appropriate, although I'd take Danilova over Flo any day, as her tones are much less shrill and demonstrative of a magnificent level of control (perhaps to be expected given her classical training). But comparisons only go so far, and the fact of the matter is that Zola Jesus incorporates elements from a host of sources and conjures something that is distilled and uniquely rarefied.
The bleak, apocalyptic songs get the crowd moving, a conspicuous smattering of goths amongst them, and from the number of people mouthing the words, it looks as though Zola Jesus has already won herself a devoted following. The set runs almost without pause and builds to a climactic rendition of 'Night', after which we are given just one more song, and no encore, however much we pleaded. It wouldn't have worked any other way. With just a single 'thank you,' and not even a flicker of eye contact they leave the stage, leaving the spell unbroken. Perfect.
http://www.myspace.com/zolajesus
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