SEVEN NOISES

The first time I heard about Nika & Rory was the song I'm Not Going Anywhere on a blog and I associated it immediately with Zola Jesus. I thought,.."yes I love the song but doesn't it sound too much like Zola Jesus?". Stupid me, I forgot that Zola's actual name is Nika Roza Danilova and, for that reason, this is another project she has with a friend and tour musician called Rory.
Once I cleared that initial confusion, I listened to the song again and appreciate it by itself enjoying more the differences between her main project and this duo collaboration than actually looking for similarities in style and vocal performance. And yes, although the darkness and thick synths are there it sounds like if Nika has been influenced by contemporary R&B and interpolating it into her own territory, the same way The XX did it last year. There's even heavily autotuned vocals by the end of the song which I think are courtesy of Rory but it could even be by Nika herself.
Now that Zola Jesus is getting bigger getting lots of attention by the press it could even happen that this project, still not information about any release whatsoever, eclipses her other alter ego thanks to a closer and cleaner approach to mainstream sounds.
If you thought that The Night was one of the tracks of the year you have here another big competitor for on-repeat track of the year. You can also listen (and download) two more tracks on their Myspace.