Kate NV.
Notes From The Underground.
Kate NV Writer James Balmont Kate Shilonosova sits gazing out of a window in her Moscow apartment as she chats to Perfect over Zoom. ‘We haven't seen the sun for a couple of weeks,’ she groans. It’s a grim reflection of the weather, but also of an unsettling atmosphere in the Russian capital. Over the past two years, as the artist better known as Kate NV explains, the city has become an anxious place, as political tensions in the wake of the controversial imprisonment of opposition leader Alexei Navalny reach a ‘scary and intense’ peak. ‘I’ve been so stressed this whole week,’ she says, of the days leading up to a series of public protests that would make international news in January. ‘I always feel like I’m about to faint.’
Shilonosova’s latest album, Room for the Moon, then, feels like a muchneeded dose of escapism from a world riddled with unease. ‘It’s a combination of everything that I listened to when I was a kid,’ she says. With the USSR’s Iron Curtain restricting imports of foreign media into the country until the end of the Cold War in 1991, she explains, musicians and artists were often left to fill in the gaps themselves. ‘We couldn’t get all the information,’ she laughs, describing the ‘crazy’ Russian music she would hear on TV. ‘You had to use your imagination... to reinvent, and reimagine.’
Years later, this obscured perception of the world would encourage her to take influence from Eighties ‘City Pop; years later, as friends living in Vladivostok, one of the most Eastern cities in Russia, shared records they'd imported from nearby Japan. ‘I find a lot of similarities between Russian music and Japanese City Pop," she says, recalling the synthesizers and drum machines she heard on television as a child. But it was more than just that: ‘Japanese music is full of freedom.’
And so on Room for the Moon, tracks like ‘Sayonara’ and ‘Ça Commence Par’, built on new-age synths and xylophonic percussion, recall the marimbas of famed percussionist Midori Takada, or even the experimental music of Yasuaki Shimizu.
But they are also given a greater lease of life by virtue of Shilonosova’s own giddy vocals, reminiscent of Eighties post-punk singer Lizzy Mercier Descloux, and via the playful presence of brassy horns and bouncing bass lines. For her shoot for Perfect magazine, Shilonosova opted for bright and vivid colours. Rainbow balloons and a giant chair position the artist as an innocent child once again, while the sky-blue tarp, and a verdant green suit picked from the Gucci look book, almost recall the nostalgic album covers of ‘Green’ and ‘Soundscape 1: Surround’ – two collections of ambient, environmental music by the cult musician Hiroshi Yoshimura.
All in all, Kate NV’s creative work feels like a breath of fresh air – and one that Moscow surely is grateful for right now.
