Stridulum II
| Stridulum II | ||||
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| Studio album by Zola Jesus | ||||
| Released | 23 August 2010 | |||
| Label | Souterrain Transmissions | |||
| Producer | Nika Roza Danilova | |||
| Zola Jesus chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| BBC Music |   |
| New Musical Express | |
| Rave magazine |  |
| The Quietus | (4.25/5) |
| Drowned in Sound | |
| The Observer | |
| Uncut | |
| MusicOMH | |
| The Fly | |
| AU Magazine | |
Stridulum II is the second full-length studio album release (although it is considered her debut in the UK) by Zola Jesus, released by the German label Souterrain Transmissions on 23 August 2010. The album combines all six songs from the Stridulum EP with three of the four songs from the Valusia EP; the cover art is modified from the cover of Stridulum.
Stridulum II, the album that (according to Dazed & Confused magazine) "explores good and evil, extreme behaviour and how doing something small can make a big change" was inspired by Giulio Paradisi's 1979 film:
I love Giulio Paradisi's Stridulum because it is very ambitious, very confusing and very beautiful. It's not a particularly well-made film, it's certainly isn't very linear and doesn't always make sense, but that's only because he is trying to do too much with it. At its centre is a battle between good and evil...
Zola Jesus referred particularly to the scene when Goodness (John Huston) tries to rescue the film's heroine by 'washing her bad side away' and when doves fall from the sky. "That particular scene and the score are both incredibly striking pieces of work. Moments of the score are used in my track Stradilum and I chose it to be the title of the album. It's a very empowering idea", the singer added.
The original EP wasn't conceived as an album. According to Zola Jesus, the songs came in later when Souterrain Division asked her for more tracks to make it full-length size. "I tried to make them fit in with the EP but they didn't really, I don't think. When I feel like I've done something already I want to try something new, so at the time that the EP came out I already wanted to try new things and I didn't really want to revisit an old format," she added. For Stridulum II Zola Jesus consciously moved away from the lo-fi aesthetics of The Spoils into a sound that was better produced and clarified. "I just wanted to grow as an artist, I wanted to prove to myself that I didn't have anything to hide underneath the fuzz. Sometimes it's easy to compromise talent when you're working with those frequencies because a lot of things get lost," she commented. "Manifest Destiny" was used in the trailer for Neill Blomkamp's movie Elysium.
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