Noveller is Sarah Lipstate, a composer/ creator of cinematic soundscapes using guitar and effect/ loop pedals. The most recent Noveller album “Arrow” was released in June, and it’s an immersive adventure in sound.
“Pattern Recognition” is the most overt guitar-sounding track here, as the rest of the album is more texture and sound layers created from bowed, looped, effect-saturated guitar-generated sounds.
The music on “Arrow” works on multiple levels – cinematic soundtracks, ambient music, futuristic soundscapes, experimental instrumental guitar (post-)rock, even instrumental dream-pop. Although guitar-generated it feels more like a relative of mid-70s Tangerine Dream circa “Phaedra” than anything else.
Reading interviews with Lipstate its apparent there’s an organic creation process involved, seeing where the sounds take the music. It’s something Holger Czukay (see previous+1 PopLib post) would understand and approve of. As he explained in a 2009 interview “you could say that I use randomness, chance. Classical composers were searching for the music, but what they didn’t realise is that sometimes the music is also searching for you.”
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