Kate NV's music is a feast for the senses
Avant-pop that delights, excites and unsettles – sometimes against its favor.
Dear Looper,
First, let me just say how grateful I am that you’re reading this. It was only a week ago when I introduced new subscription tiers that allowed you to contribute monthly or annually to Loops. Almost twenty of you have already done so, many at the Founding Member level. And the newsletter continues to grow. We’re likely to be 200 strong by the end of the day! (A little plug never hurts; thanks, Colorado Sun.)
But enough of the shareholder-report talk.
This week I wanted to bring you something out of the ordinary. It’s WOW, the newest album by Russian avant-pop artist Kate NV.
That was the video for “(meow chat)”, as well as a pretty vivid depiction of what goes on in my head every day.
Kate NV (Kate Shilonosova) excels at building playgrounds like this, arranging bold and round sounds into shape only to knock them down and start all over again. The results can be rhythmic, like the xylophones and synths that bounce across 2018’s для FOR, or they can support and enhance a melody, like on 2020’s Room for the Moon. (The latter reminds me of the work of another Kate – Bush – who like Shilonosova takes mischievous delight in showing us places outside of our comfort zone.)
On WOW, the playground threatens to tip over and expose itself. Kate NV is using instruments that are even more expressive than those found in her previous projects. They’re more unruly and often out-of-tune, too. (Some come straight out of the Found Sound Nation’s “Broken Orchestra” sample pack, according to a note from her label.)
At their best, the arrangements are kaleidoscopic and absorbing, and so syncopated they wouldn’t sound out of place on the dance floor. Take “razmishlenie (thinking)”, whose vocal samples refract at a steady pulse before bursting like bubbles in mid-air:
Yet too often, WOW veers into the uncanny valley of vaporwave. A wrong note repeats, two instruments clash, keys bang aggressively and the simulation comes close to crashing down. In an interview with Katie Hawthorne in Crack Magazine, Shilonosova acknowledged this is part of her intent:
“I still don’t know the proper notes,” she grins. “I think about this all the time, how it’s hard to stay naive once you learn how to play an instrument. You start taking the same paths all the time, and it can get predictable. I don’t want to be predictable.”
That curiosity can entice listeners in songs like “confessions at the dinner table,” where the clatter of cutlery gives way to a truly hilarious saxophone showcase. It can also unsettle them, like on “early bird”, whose synth horns and slap bass are more dystopian than playful. Those experiments end up detracting from the gorgeous, more traditionally-composed songs and beat work on the album.
The chaos and “vaporwave” tag make sense given many of these songs were written years before Room for the Moon, according to Shilonosova. As a result, WOW is an intriguing time capsule, one whose unearthing only strengthens Kate NV’s musical trajectory and grows my anticipation for what she may bring in the future.
I’m curious to know what you think. My next letter will come soon.
Until then,
Miguel
P.S. Portions of WOW sales will go toward War Child, “an organization that supports children and their families impacted by conflict,” according to RVNG Intl. The release is available for sale on Bandcamp.
P.P.S. When I was in kindergarten, I was part of a class choreography set to “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” They adorned me inside of a reindeer costume and pushed us all onto a slippery auditorium stage. It was only a matter of time before we started slipping and falling down, to the ridicule of our parents who recorded everything on their video cameras.