Conatus

Conatus is the third studio album by American singer Zola Jesus, released in the United Kingdom on September 26, 2011, and in the United States on October 4 by Sacred Bones Records. The album was produced by Brian "Nudge" Foote (Jackie-O Motherfucker, Cloudland Canyon) and Nika Roza Danilova herself. Background Several critics noticed that the new album sounds different from Zola Jesus' earlier works. "I just wanted to try out new ways to produce and different ways to write. And with this new record it's a lot more stripped down and there are way more acoustic elements as opposed to no acoustic elements. [...] I just wanted more breathing room, so people could insert their own experiences into the song, their own feelings into the song, as opposed to me forcing it on them with the densest sound possible", Danilova explained. Speaking to Prefix Magazine after her performance at the Pitchfork Music Festival, she said she wanted the album to be a step forward. "[I]n doing that, there was so, so much trial and error and so much quitting music at the end of the day", she admitted. Danilova said that the title of the album (meaning "moving forward" in Latin) appeared before the work on it began. "I had it in mind beforehand because I knew that's what I was going through even before I sat down to work on the record, I was already going through that emotional process of trying to push myself", she said. Answering the question about how and why the new album was different from her previous records, Danilova said: Brian Foote, Danilova's friend, has been bought in when she realized she had too much of ideas to sort them out. "Some of them weren't really a good fit, as I found out during the process, and by the end I kind of realised that I needed someone to help me along the way. So, it made sense to ask Brian as he's a great friend of mine that also lives in Los Angeles and he has a great studio with lots of resources. He helped oversee the production of the record and made sure that everything was done on time and nothing was missed out during recording and it worked out just perfect", she said. It was easy for her to work with Foote who, understanding that she was a "control freak", tried to "step away a lot". Yet, he had a lot of "great suggestions about how to change little things to make them more effective", according to Danilova, and also let her use his "amazing synth collection" which helped the songs grow.