Dancefloor Oracle Zora Jones Breaks Down 11 Perfectly Produced Tracks
The mind-bending dynamo on the music that taught her how to hear the future.
The Producers is an interview series where our favorite artists discuss their favorite music production.
For nearly 15 years, Zora Jones has been zapping the global dance scene with her super-shiny, super-gloopy sound. Think zero-gravity synths. Think adrenaline-spiking melodies that also happen to be preternaturally beautiful. Think beats that sound like the club refracted in one of Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Rooms. She’s constantly pushing the boundaries of what a producer can do, and upping the bar for how to think about futurism in club music.
But in the years since her 2020 debut album, Ten Billion Angels, Jones has been relatively quiet, dropping only a few, predictably excellent loosies, including the taffy-like “Miau,” with the outré musician and performance artist Golin. During that low-profile time, Jones tells me over video chat, she was recalibrating both her life—moving from Montreal back to Barcelona, where she attended college—and her songwriting, on a mission to improve and expand her work. She’s been developing her skills as a vocalist (“It’s the hardest instrument I’ve had to learn”) and taking piano lessons from the Catalan experimental musician Marina Herlop, Jones’ roommate when she first moved back to Barcelona. Last month, Jones returned with the brain-breaking Angel Crisis EP, six nimble club joints that could double as Venusian pop songs, and moved her music to her own new imprint, Bellyfat.
Angel Crisis also alludes to what her forthcoming album will sound like—the quavering song “Make Up Bag Part 1” will have a sequel, for instance—but the LP will have more of a vocal focus. “With songwriting, I don’t like being comfortable with the tools I have, and I always try to learn new things,” Jones says. “I approach production similarly. I don’t like to be comfortable when I’m producing, because a lot of the best ideas come from surprises or ‘mistakes.’ I like to keep approaching every song with a sense of curiosity and novelty. I try to really outdo myself every time.”
After Jones and I chat, she’s planning to spend a day recording with a previous collaborator, the Spanish rapper La Zowi. It’s a session inspired by her adopted country’s thriving music scene, which has been invigorating for Jones over the last few years. “It feels like a very active moment, but also very innocent in a way. There are so many unbelievably talented artists doing things here right now, and they’re all open and approachable,” Jones explains. “It doesn’t have this cutthroat feeling that the North American industry has. It has a very communal and collaborative feeling to it. I’ve been the happiest I’ve ever been in my life. Barcelona feels like home for me.”
Here are 11 songs Jones considers perfectly produced, ranging from glitchy flamenco to a tittering grime classic to the track that blew up bassline, the Sheffield dance genre, in the late 2000s.
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