Vancouver-based The Zolas release their first new single of 2021 with “Another Dimension (feat. Cadence Weapon).” Discussing the tracks genesis and then the collaboration with the Toronto-based rapper The Zola’s Zach Gray says:
“We were in the studio tripping out on what it will feel like when it’s possible to properly get together and go big in the city again. The song came together super quickly and we found ourselves with a future post-pandemic squad track; clattering around the city draped all over each other, descending into throbbing after hours full of weirdos. I sent it to Cadence Weapon who I’ve known mostly through my brother and the Montreal scene and he jumped on right away. Everyone’s in the same headspace where we know it’s gonna happen but right now it still feels like another dimension.”
Cadence Weapon: “When I wrote my verse for ‘Another Dimension,’ I pictured myself as a futuristic street preacher proselytizing about a dystopian future that has slowly become our present reality. I wanted to be the voice of the omniscient being whose face looms from a giant telescreen in the film version of 1984.”
In 2016 The Zolas released their Juno-nominated, critically acclaimed breakthrough LP Swooner. The follow up – featuring a new direction for the band – was planned for 2020 Yet, like with so many of their contemporaries, Covid led The Zolas to pivot and instead they launched a new campaign they dubbed “Z Days” which promised fans a new single on the 2nd of each month. True to their word the band has shared 5 singles this year including Octobrer’s “I Feel The Transition” which entered the US Submodern chart at #22, and has been added to several stations across Canada. The series kicked off in June with “Energy Czar” which was followed by July’s “Come Back To Life” and “Ultramarine” in August. September saw the band unveil “Wreck Beach/Totem Park.”
The tracks that have been featured during Z Days” touch on everything from waking up to Canada’s appalling treatment of its First Nations (“Wreck Beach/Totem Park”) to global wealth disparity (“I Feel the Transition”). Throughout The Zolas haven’t been afraid to get serious on the lyrical side of things. “Honestly every album I’ve ever written is about nostalgia and the apocalypse and these tracks have been no different” Gray notes, “but looking at it now these songs feel really specific to our moment in time. It’s a cross-section of conversations I’ve had and overheard in these past few years. Conversations we’ve all been a part of whether we like it or not.”
