Novo Line

Zeit

Genre: INDUSTRIAL / WAVE / ELECTRO

LP (Black Vinyl)

Boomkat Product Review:

Atari ST sorcerer Novo Line firms up some of his most direct but beguiling industrial-pop productions in a clutch of bugged-out bangers for Elena Colombi’s label - RIYL Suicide, early AFX, Dux Dux, Belgian new beat, ‘late ‘80s industrial

Following a series of cultishly prized sessions for Ecstatic and cosmic disco label Protofuture, ‘Zeit’ marks a decade of ingenious work by Berlin’s Nat Fowler under the Novo Line alias, which has become feted by hardware and computer music fetishists for his experiments with original late ‘80s dance music tone, tunings and temporality.

Heavily inspired by a pivotal era c’86/’87 when midi technology and early computer software changed the face of contemporary electronic club music, Novo Line’s retro-futurist fascinations have generated some of the spiciest, gnarled grooves of the past decade for fans of everything from early AFX and Belgian new beat to Front 242, and his debut for Osare! squares up some of his plumpest pumpers for the ‘floor.

Notorious for live shows featuring not one but two full Atari ST hardware set-ups, synced with synths/keyboards in wickedly offbeat grind, Novo Line’s records follow suit with a hugely distinctive sound that blurs grid boundaries with a brilliantly fucked-up quality right on the edge of industrial noise, but yoked back to a more freakish club quality that’s plays to his innovative strengths on ‘Zeit’.

It’s by some distance his most industrial/wave/pop-oriented work due to the inclusion of vocals, ranging from Monica Kremidi’s possessed sort of Diamanda Galas presence on the zig-zag jag ‘Ain’t That a Mess’, to his own worked into the combustible thrum of ‘Cortina’ and the indie-pop contrasts of Cass MCComb surprisingly worked into the new beat-y chew of ‘Morning Star’, while Nat’s nagging, cubist future-baroque melody chatters away in the EP’s major highlight ‘Stein’, coupled with speaker-buckling bass in a mind-bending drug chug.

TIP!

LP (Black Vinyl) (4)