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""Nova" is a refuge, sensitive and icy, airy and nocturnal, reflecting the torments and disillusions of Sylvaine."
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4/5
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Sylvaine is a solitary and feminine entity ginning up a winter blackgaze that has very quickly shown that she should be taken seriously, a complete artist for whom music has an obvious cathartic dimension. Since "Wistful", the first offering thanks to which we discovered her six years ago, the Norwegian has not been idle, tracing new escapes at a regular rhythm. "Nova" is her fourth album.
Neige (Alcest), who came to support her behind the drums, the only instrument she doesn't play - on the first opus, doesn't take part in the adventure anymore, but his shadow still hovers, covering the successor of "Time Wihout End" with his tutelary influence. In fact, in spite of what seems to announce its title, "Nova", the young woman continues to spread her spleen through long laments torn between ghostly light and twilight darkness, between diaphanous melodies and dramatic flaying.
But beauty is always there, intimate and painful. More than ever, the most French of the Scandinavians reveals herself, exposes herself, like this cover which represents her in all her virginal nudity, in a fetal position suggesting a (re)birth - or a need to protect herself. Therefore, "Nova" refers not to a change of style but to a personal transformation that commands an even more introspective expression. More desperate too. The fact that the work opens on this lonely, skeletal title track, which resounds only with the voice (or almost) of the mistress of the place, thus augurs a fragile creation, an inner journey that can only be tormented, facing storms and misfortunes, hatred and regrets but also joy or hope, even fleeting.
What lets guess a 'Mono No Aware' that the blond alternately blackens or washes out with her song torn between spectral clarity and mineral darkness. But with the exception of this complaint and of 'Fortapt' that also tears apart this ambivalence, "Nova" is bathed in a wadded delicacy, soaked in a misty bitterness, witness this 'Nowhere, Still Somewhere' that has something of a drift in the limbo that the ethereal vocals and the pointillist guitar bring. 'I Close My Eyes So I Can See' has to wait for its last part to finally explode in an angry geyser, while the final 'Everything Must Come To An End' vibrates with a symphonic and soft brilliance.
More composed than its predecessors, which makes its outpourings of rage even more upsetting, "Nova" is a refuge, sensitive and icy, airy and nocturnal, reflecting the torments and disillusions of its creator. - Official website
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TRACK LISTING:
01. Nova - 4:36 02. Mono No Aware - 9:43 03. Nowhere, Still Somewhere - 4:34 04. Fortapt - 11:55 05. I Close My Eyes So I Can See - 5:14 06. Everything Must Come To An End - 7:48
LINEUP:
Sylvaine: Chant / Guitares / Basse / Claviers Dorian Mansiaux: Batterie / Invité
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4/5 (1 view(s))
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STAFF:
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