Zora Jones is forging her own fantasies

Our idea of ‘strange’ seems to reach preposterous new levels by the day. But gravitating towards the work of Zora Jones is anything but odd, fizzing as it does with big lightbulb energy. The Austrian-born, Barcelona-based artist is known for forging stratospheric productions that distort the very fabric of pop, club music, and R&B. Since emerging from the club scene of Barcelona as co-founder of imprint Fractal Fantasy, Jones has knocked on some pretty unusual doors. She once launched Gucci Mane’s ad libs into outer space, just as one example, and co-created an entire virtual club during the pandemic. The visual artwork of her 2020 debut LP Ten Billion Angels, meanwhile, was partly inspired by the hyperspecific fetish of digital tentacle porn. Though some might find such kinks a bit pervy, Jones spoke about it with blithe empathy in an excellent interview with club music platform Electronic Beats that same year. “[These modders] don’t care about getting famous or getting money from these things. They do it purely for the passion of needing to see these things and needing to make them,” she said at the time.Since the arrival of generative AI software, the dedication and practice...