| Zora Jones — 100 Ladies EP (November 16, 2015) |
Zora Jones — 100 Ladies EP (November 16, 2015)
♦ Osob jménem Zora Jones je na světě nejméně 8.517, pokud dáme filtr věku 18 až 65+. Hudební performerka je však pouze jedna jediná a těžko ji někdo napodobí. Sinjin Hawke, who executive produced the project, describes the EP as “a perfect balance between polyrhythm and dissonance — somehow reminiscent of flight footwork but completely internalised, with melodies so alien yet deeply rich and beautiful unlike anything I’ve heard before.”
Location: Wien, Austria ~ Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
Album release: November 16, 2015
Record Label: Fractal Fantasy
Duration: 17:31
Tracks:
1 Oh Boy 2:27
2 Too Many Tears 2:04
3 Zui 2:06
4 Scarlet [Interlude] 0:59
5 Psilocybin 3:19
6. Glade 3:06
7. First Light 3:30
℗ 2015 Fractal Fantasy
Review
By Philip Sherburne; December 4, 2015 // Score: 8.0
♦ Zora Jones has described 2010 as her year zero. She saw DJ Rashad spin for the first time at a party in Montreal, which was pretty much everyone’s first encounter with footwork in a club setting. She and her friends ended up spending a week with the Chicago DJ, and he gave them a batch of tracks he’d produced with his Ghettoteknitianz crew. It opened up a whole new world for her. “That folder is still one of the main folders I go to for inspiration,” she told The Fader. “Those tracks are so crisp to me and so influential. 2010 was the year for me.”
♦ You can hear the late Rashad’s influence on Jones’ debut EP, 100 Ladies — or at least, you can deduce it. Many of her tracks move at 160 BPM, smack in the middle of footwork's sweet spot. But in the past five years, Jones has also established her own sound, one that’s indebted to footwork (and also to grime), but irreducible to either of those genres. It’s several steps removed — and that’s a direct result of the work that she’s put in.
♦ The title of the Austrian–born, Barcelona–based producer’s EP is a reference to a pact that she made with herself: to make 100 tracks before she released anything. This isn’t the first thing she has unveiled; there have been collaborations with Sinjin Hawke and DJ Taye on FractalFantasy (the imprint she runs with Hawke, which began life as an online outlet for audiovisual productions), and she’s posted the odd solo track to her SoundCloud account. But this is her first extended statement, and the singularity of her vision is immediately apparent.
♦ Aside from the occasional anchoring 808 kick, she favors thin, silvery sounds: brittle rimshots, tinny hi–hats, and 808 toms tuned toward their upper limits. Her main instrument is the voice — resampled, stacked in dizzying fifths, pitched up near dog–whistle frequency, and painted on in bright, loopy brushstrokes. Put together, these elements combine to suggest club music injected with helium and sent bobbing high overhead.
♦ Of the album’s seven tracks, only two come anywhere close to resembling established forms. “Zui”, with its shuddering 808 patterns and stuttering monosyllables, wears its footwork influences proudly on its sleeve, and the lurching cadence of “Too Many Tears” sounds like an outgrowth of the “weightless” style of grime favored by Mumdance, Rabit, and Murlo. Again, though, her wordless vocal melodies stand proudly apart; they’re eerie, shapeshifting things, part violin and part warbling bird, and their effect is spellbinding.
♦ The EP is bookended by its best tracks. The footwork–tempo closer “First Light” pumps away like Philip Glass rearranged for tin whistle, Gameboy, and chipmunk, while the opening “Oh Boy” forsakes drums entirely; it’s just wordless vocal trills pitched up into icy configurations accompanied by the hollow hum of whirly tubes. ♦ Despite their novelty, both songs remain unusually moving; for all the flyaway nature of her sounds, her compositions carry real emotional weight. They offer the equivalent of a solid musical form being melted down and channeled into tiny, sidewinding rivulets; it will be fascinating to see where these streams carry her next.
♦ http://pitchfork.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MissZoraJones
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/zora-jones
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ZoraJonesss
Label: http://fractalfantasy.net/
_____________________________________________________________
| Zora Jones — 100 Ladies EP (November 16, 2015) |
♦ Osob jménem Zora Jones je na světě nejméně 8.517, pokud dáme filtr věku 18 až 65+. Hudební performerka je však pouze jedna jediná a těžko ji někdo napodobí. Sinjin Hawke, who executive produced the project, describes the EP as “a perfect balance between polyrhythm and dissonance — somehow reminiscent of flight footwork but completely internalised, with melodies so alien yet deeply rich and beautiful unlike anything I’ve heard before.”
Location: Wien, Austria ~ Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
Album release: November 16, 2015
Record Label: Fractal Fantasy
Duration: 17:31
Tracks:
1 Oh Boy 2:27
2 Too Many Tears 2:04
3 Zui 2:06
4 Scarlet [Interlude] 0:59
5 Psilocybin 3:19
6. Glade 3:06
7. First Light 3:30
℗ 2015 Fractal Fantasy
Review
By Philip Sherburne; December 4, 2015 // Score: 8.0
♦ Zora Jones has described 2010 as her year zero. She saw DJ Rashad spin for the first time at a party in Montreal, which was pretty much everyone’s first encounter with footwork in a club setting. She and her friends ended up spending a week with the Chicago DJ, and he gave them a batch of tracks he’d produced with his Ghettoteknitianz crew. It opened up a whole new world for her. “That folder is still one of the main folders I go to for inspiration,” she told The Fader. “Those tracks are so crisp to me and so influential. 2010 was the year for me.”
♦ You can hear the late Rashad’s influence on Jones’ debut EP, 100 Ladies — or at least, you can deduce it. Many of her tracks move at 160 BPM, smack in the middle of footwork's sweet spot. But in the past five years, Jones has also established her own sound, one that’s indebted to footwork (and also to grime), but irreducible to either of those genres. It’s several steps removed — and that’s a direct result of the work that she’s put in.
♦ The title of the Austrian–born, Barcelona–based producer’s EP is a reference to a pact that she made with herself: to make 100 tracks before she released anything. This isn’t the first thing she has unveiled; there have been collaborations with Sinjin Hawke and DJ Taye on FractalFantasy (the imprint she runs with Hawke, which began life as an online outlet for audiovisual productions), and she’s posted the odd solo track to her SoundCloud account. But this is her first extended statement, and the singularity of her vision is immediately apparent.
♦ Aside from the occasional anchoring 808 kick, she favors thin, silvery sounds: brittle rimshots, tinny hi–hats, and 808 toms tuned toward their upper limits. Her main instrument is the voice — resampled, stacked in dizzying fifths, pitched up near dog–whistle frequency, and painted on in bright, loopy brushstrokes. Put together, these elements combine to suggest club music injected with helium and sent bobbing high overhead.
♦ Of the album’s seven tracks, only two come anywhere close to resembling established forms. “Zui”, with its shuddering 808 patterns and stuttering monosyllables, wears its footwork influences proudly on its sleeve, and the lurching cadence of “Too Many Tears” sounds like an outgrowth of the “weightless” style of grime favored by Mumdance, Rabit, and Murlo. Again, though, her wordless vocal melodies stand proudly apart; they’re eerie, shapeshifting things, part violin and part warbling bird, and their effect is spellbinding.
♦ The EP is bookended by its best tracks. The footwork–tempo closer “First Light” pumps away like Philip Glass rearranged for tin whistle, Gameboy, and chipmunk, while the opening “Oh Boy” forsakes drums entirely; it’s just wordless vocal trills pitched up into icy configurations accompanied by the hollow hum of whirly tubes. ♦ Despite their novelty, both songs remain unusually moving; for all the flyaway nature of her sounds, her compositions carry real emotional weight. They offer the equivalent of a solid musical form being melted down and channeled into tiny, sidewinding rivulets; it will be fascinating to see where these streams carry her next.
♦ http://pitchfork.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MissZoraJones
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/zora-jones
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ZoraJonesss
Label: http://fractalfantasy.net/