Versions
On the heels of her Conatus world tour, Nika Roza Danilova was offered an opportunity to perform at one of the most prestigious modern art museums in the world, NY's Guggenheim. Rather than doing her standard Zola Jesus electronic set she decided she wanted to work with a classical composer who could arrange her songs for a quartet. She recruited legendary industrial pioneer JG Thirlwell (Foetus) to do the arrangements. If there is a common thread to Thirlwell's varied musical styles, it is dramatic intensity and evocative, cinematic quality.
Versions, a collaboration with a string quartet led by J.G. Thirlwell, recasts some of Nika Roza Danilov's best songs in an orchestral setting. Danilova's powerful voice is still the focal point, but it's given a different cast by the neo-classical arrangements.
Despite it technically not being new material, by doing away with the usual dark, semi-industrial synths, this collaboration with JG Thirwell and the Mivos Quartet is sufficiently different and worthwhile.
The most startling aspect of Zola Jesus collaboration with composer/musician J.G. Thirlwell might not be what you expect.
Zola Jesus, aka experimental musician and songwriter Nika Rosa Danilova, collaborated with veteran producer Foetus, aka JG Thirlwell, on these neo-classical arrangements of her understated, gothic electronic compositions for a show at New York's Guggenheim. These tracks, the studio versions of their collaborations, take her melancholic, cinematic songwriting and strip away the more experimental aspects, revealing the fragile and intense songwriting at their core
Versions is a collection of songs from Nika Roza Danilova's, aka Zola Jesus, career to date, made over with Thirlwell's string arrangements, an idea that originated when they played a collaborative show together last year.
Album review: Clash rates 'Versions', the new album from Zola Jesus featuring JG Thirlwell and Mivos Quartet., released on Sacred Bones...
With Versions, Jesus achieves something her previous albums hadn’t: She’s created art so unobjectionable that it attains a kind of beige obscenity.