Zola Jesus Announces New Album Arkhon, Shares Video for New Song: Watch

Nika Roza Danilova has announced her sixth full-length album as Zola Jesus. Arkhon arrives May 20 via Sacred Bones, marking her first LP in nearly five years. Today, she has shared lead single “Lost,” which samples a Slovenian folk choir. The track arrives with a music video written, directed, edited, and shot on location in the Cappadocia area of Turkey by Mu Tunç. Check it out below and scroll down for the album art and tracklist.

Speaking of her new song, Danilova said in press materials: “It’s true. Everyone I know is lost. Lost hope, lost future, lost present, lost planet. There is a collective disillusionment of our burning potential. As we stray further from nature, we drift from ourselves. ‘Lost’ is a sigil to re-discover our coordinates and claim a new path.”

Of the video, she continued:

I wanted to shoot the video in a place that carried a lot of energy, with someone that I felt understood the spiritual backbone of the song. It was a surprisingly natural process to make this video with Mu Tunc in Turkey. I put my faith in him and in Cappadocia, a labyrinthine city built within 60 million-year-old caves. Throughout human history these caves have served as a citadel for so many different groups of people who went there to get lost. It is a testament to the resilience of humanity, and the durability of our earth.

Tunç added: “The story of ‘Lost’ is a visual litany of devotion. Reflects the exodus of the true self through the mystical environments of Cappadocia. Zola Jesus is for me like an outcast philosopher of today’s confused society.’’

Danilova worked with producer Randall Dunn and percussionist Matt Chamberlain on her new album. Arkhon, which means “power” or “ruler” in Ancient Greek, follows Zola Jesus’ 2017 LP Okovi. The title also has a relevance in Gnosticism. “Arkons are a Gnostic idea of power wielded through a flawed god,” Danilova said in a press release. “They taint and tarnish humanity, keeping them corrupted instead of letting them find their harmonious selves. I do feel like we are living in an arkhonic time; these negative influences are weighing extremely heavy on all of us. We’re in a time of arkhons. There’s power in naming that.”