Posts Tagged ‘Novella’

NOVELLA – ” Thun “

Posted: January 4, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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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.

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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 – ” Sentences “

Posted: January 15, 2017 in MUSIC
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How does one review an album as good as this without gushing too much As it is, everyone I know is going on about Novella they are a five piece UK group with four women and one guy, The album produced by Jonas Verijnen (Moon Duo, Ballet School) and Joshua Third (The Horrors).

I am reminded of some awesome Kiwi rock on the opening track, “Follow”. Think more of Bailter Space than The Clean, as the song has a heavier vibe and also reminds me of Stereolab. In fact, it also has a motorik feel to it. Muscular and lean, with a cool fuzzed out guitar joining the sweet mayhem. And then the vocals dive in, and I am totally blissed out. “Something Must Change” continues in that propulsive, distorted vein, capped by sweet, female vocals. Listeners may play spot the influence and could hear bands as disparate as Can and 13th Floor Elevators.

Not that it really matters, since Novella has carved their own path in the thickly defined forest of psychedelia that inhabits this planet. The mood completely changes on the lustrous and beautiful “Sentences”, reminding me of down tempo Lush. Stately guitars pair with crystalline harmonies, a perfect mix for this group. Psychedelic touches brush nearly everything on this release, but it’s never heavy-handed or too far out. “Two Ships” starts out with sitar tones and rather quickly morphs into beautiful, joyous noise.

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The band’s two new members add a lot of texture to these songs, and the collision of sound meshes perfectly. “Land Gone” has an instantly memorable chorus that most bands would kill for! “Phrases” is equally fine, with that metronome-like drumming I favor in fast step with burgeoning guitar lines. The songs are simple, but the band adds many layers to build an expansive sound. “Blue Swallow” lifts the drum part from “Tomorrow Never Knows” and puts it to effective use in a twisting and turning opus that lasts nearly six minutes. “Younger Than Yesterday” (borrowing a title from The Byrds this time) has watery melodic motes and once again reminds me of Miki and Emma from Lush. “Skies Open” once again employs sitar and marries it to sunny vocals and smoothly strummed guitar. It is the end to this musical journey, one I greatly enjoyed and highly recommend to fans of Krautrock and deftly written and played psychedelia.

Members
Hollie Warren (Guitar/Vocals)
Sophy Hollington (Guitar/Vocals)
Suki Sou (Bass)
Iain Laws (Drums)

NOVELLA – ” Does The Island Know “

Posted: December 13, 2016 in MUSIC
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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.

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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.

NOVELLA – ” Change Of State “

Posted: November 17, 2016 in MUSIC
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It’s been a year dominated by Brexit and Trump,the death of many music legends, spiralling conflict in the Middle East. Debut album ‘Land Gone’ was only released last year, So when Novella settled down to craft a new album they couldn’t help channeling some of their thoughts and feelings about the world around them into their music. The record is due to be released in February 2017, it will have almost been the obligatory two-year second album gap. Working with producer James Hoare – Veronica Falls, Ultimate Painting -The recording techniques were sparse at a Victorian House in Stoke Newington, the group allowed their ideas to flow forth.
New album ‘Change Of State’ emerges early next year,

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NOVELLA – ” Land “

Posted: May 10, 2015 in MUSIC
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UK band Novella release their debut album, “Land”, next week and we’re premiering a stream of the entire album. As mentioned, Novella pull from a variety of krautrock/shoegaze influences, so if you like your music shimmering, droning, featherlight , they do it very well with no shortage of memorable melodies. Think Lush, Stereolab, Pale Saints, TOY, Dum Dum Girls, etc. Land is out May 12 via Sinderlyn.

Novella’s formation was the result of an instant spark—guitarist Hollie Warren, guitarist Sophy Hollington, and bassist Suki Sou met through mutual friends in Brighton in 2010, where they quickly realized that they shared a common love for ‘60s counterculture and bands like Black Sabbath, the Brian Jonestown Massacre, and Pale Saints. The addition of drummer Iain Laws in 2011 and keyboardist Isabel Spurgeon in 2014 solidified the group into a propulsive engine, capable of welding woozy, cosmic psychedelia to sustained squalls of flanged-out, far-out dream pop. Novella’s debut album, “Land”, is a controlled blast of mainlined electricity, a tempest of relentless groove and crystalline vocals that is at once the vicious edge and the calm eye of the storm.

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Recorded during one ice-cold week in January of 2014 by Jonas Verijnen (Moon Duo, Ballet School) and Joshua Third (The Horrors) in an abandoned clothing factory-turned-studio in Dalston, East London, Land perfectly absorbs the band’s vast array of influences and transforms them into songs that Fact Magazine described as “equal parts effete jangle and ferocious riffage.” Combining London gloom and cosmic escapism, Sou and Laws channel Can and the 13th Floor Elevators on the krautrock-inspired jams like “Follow” and “Something Must Change,” while Warren and Hollington stomp their homemade flanger and phaser pedals to create dueling arcs of electric guitars. As the band churns and riffs, the girls’ voices soar brilliantly, their glassy clarity recalling the Lynchian shoegaze of Lush or Stereolab. During quieter, more reflective songs like “Sentences” and “Younger Than Yesterday,” there are echoes of eerie psychedelia like Broadcast evident in the myriad of flutes, synths, and Fender Electric XII guitars.

On Land, Novella captures the wild spirit of creating something new from pieces of the past. They ward off the overcast London melancholy with evocative tales of weightless meandering, of drifting over the pavement of familiar streets while dreaming about exploring fantastical alien landscapes.

NOVELLER – ” Into The Dunes “

Posted: November 13, 2014 in MUSIC
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Brooklyn-based experimental musician Sarah Lipstate plays with effects and layers on this guitar-based track from her upcoming album, Fantastic Planet. The five-minute cut gives just a taste of the album’s expansive, cinematic feel, as the slow guitar lines that open the track give way to a distorted, hypnotic wave of sound at the halfway point.

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Fantastic Planet will be released January 27 on Fire Records, and can be pre-ordered on iTunes. For more on Sarah Lipstate and Noveller, visit her site.