Posts Tagged ‘Change Of State’

NOVELLA – ” Thun “

Posted: January 4, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
Tags: , ,
0

Londoners Novella followed up their debut album Land with their new album Change of State. They recorded the new record on an old timey 1960’s 8 track for an authentic feel and worked with James Hoare – who you might know from the band Veronica Falls. The Proper Ornaments, Ultimate Painting,

Following the unveiling of album title track ‘Change of State‘ we’re giving you a first taste of ‘Thun’, a track that touches on birth and free movement.

‘Thun’ is the name of a place in Switzerland we visited on tour last year. It is incredibly beautiful but the journey there was the most terrifying experience we had on the trip, driving through snow, having to turn around and drive back on ourselves, driving on narrow roads on cliff edges, and ultimately having to cancel the show. The song tries to capture how we felt on this journey and actually emerged from a pretty natural 9 minute jam we recorded on our phone that we decide to come back to when we were finishing the album. The theme of the song explores the nature of borders and freedom of movement; the randomness of who this applies to and to whom it doesn’t.

http://

Change of State sees Novella continuing on the same trajectory of their debut from 2015. Motorik beats, icy, layered vocals and clean sounding guitar riffs. This batch of songs is stronger and they approach the same quality that Broadcast reached on Tender Buttons.

NOVELLA – ” Does The Island Know “

Posted: December 13, 2016 in MUSIC
Tags: , ,
0

On UK quartet Novella’s sophomore album Change of State, the plasticity behind the meaning of the title was no fortuitous afterthought. Rather, it is very idea on which the album was built. Following the band’s debut album, Land, released in 2015, the band has toured, traveling from one country to the next, and they have watched their home country of Britain change dramatically in social and political terms. Over the course of ten tracks, Novella take the time and space necessary to let the physical and ideological implications behind a changing state run rampant through themes that linger as much in topical discussion as they do in perennial reflections of human experience.

Recorded over the period of a few months in the Victorian bedroom studio of James Hoare (Ultimate Painting, Veronica Falls) on an old 1960’s 8-track, this set up forced Novella to utilize an economy of sound on Change of State. They discovered that there’s beauty in simplicity and restriction as nothing could be gratuitously added or subtracted with the click of a mouse. It lent, what the band call a little Joe Meek magic to the process, and what could have been an added pressure instead gave way to instinct: “The best songs we wrote were written towards the end of the sessions, when we had too little time to think too much about them”

Reflective, the songs wash over you as they delve into topics weightier than they seem upon first blush: stand out track “Change of State” references freedom of thought and those who seek to restrict it. Brooding with tinges of psychedelia, “Thun” touches on birth and the freedom of movement, which is mirrored in its almost motorik thrust. With deftly deployed subtlety, the album revolves around themes of conspiracy theories, elections, sound mirrors and the disillusioned texts of Murakami, JG Ballard and Kurt Vonnegut. The album’s cover, a linocut made by singer and lead guitarist Sophy Hollington, was inspired by Paul Nash’s war paintings.

http://

However, in what may in fact be the ultimate comment on our time, it is entirely possible to enjoy all the ethereal swathes of textures, gentle melodies and energetic bursts that Change of State has to offer without ruminating on any of the elements that inspired it. Change of State may be product of its time, but the music is, more than anything, timeless.