New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Vancouver's DIY-art-music collective, N0V3L, give us one more glimpse into their debut EP with a new single "Sign On The Line". N0V3L's Jon Varley explains the track "releases a sardonic response to being tossed into a problematic societal system, and frustrations with generational compliance of financially-insulated mindsets. Chaotic bureaucracy meets psychotic despair, resulting in a darkly comedic product - both unhinged and carefully synchronized - racked between unwilling participation and self-imposed exile." "Sign On The Line" debuted over at Tiny Mix Tapes today who've called it "raucous, yet danceable, it's a jittery throwback to early post-punk."
N0V3L's eight-track debut EP, NOVEL (out this Friday on Flemish Eye Records) is a fluorescent, freshly-scorched declaration of intent, a martial, brutalist slab of nimble melodics and group-yelped anti-capitalist mantras. Their sonic landscape recalls spring-loaded post-punk dissonance, new-wave's downcast dance anthems, and laser-precise political funk.
Frigid, wiry guitars scramble and sprint in syncopated riffs, circling each other, sparse and chiming in their aesthetic but frenetic all the same. Percussion is at turns stern and playful, from loose, brash funk strains to airtight disco beats. Bass work here, with its own thumping neon flourishes, is not so much an accompaniment but an intricate piece of this web of sounds, as critical and imaginative as the leads it lurks behind. Vocals, typically sung in unison, are sneering and sharp and jagged like the provocations they carry.
It feels crass to call N0V3L a band -- the word feels cumbersome and bloated with traditionalist connotations. N0V3L is a self-sustaining creative collective operating out of a house in Vancouver, where they produce their own music, videos, and clothing. These elements converge and convulse to create music that challenges the gluttony and ruin wrought by power, while humming along with kaleidoscopic spontaneity into a tightly-wound audible world that is at once jarring and violently danceable.
