Kate NV Wow Review: A Chaotic, Resoundingly Magical Symphony

The album evokes a childlike wonder, where the difference between terms such as “music” and “noise” becomes almost meaningless.

Kate NV, Wow
Photo: Jenia Filatova

Kate NV’s Wow is the sonic equivalent of opening a toy box, sticking your hand in, and discovering a new, unexpected trinket each time. At any given moment, as on opener “Oni (They),” which the Russian avant-pop artist sings in Japanese, or “Confessions at the Dinner Table,” you’re just as likely to hear a honking car horn as you are traditional brass, or the twangs of a vibrating xylophone arpeggio right after a series of stray notes from a creaky glockenspiel or violin. Elsewhere, “Early Bird” prominently features a squeaky, comical-sounding clarinet, while the aptly-titled “Flu” commences with a wave of fluttering flutes.

Everything is fair game for NV, who plays the role of a grand trickster with cunning resolve. She functions more as a court jester than a musician throughout Wow, where the listener is never quite allowed in on the joke—and the album is all the better for it. Its 11 maverick tracks are experimental in the truest sense of the word: They’re whimsical and wide-eyed, and often feel like they’re about to collapse under the weight of their own compositional volatility.

But while the album can certainly feel random, it’s a clever bait-and-switch, given how carefully NV has arranged these tracks and how many mightily deceptive melodies she’s able to sneak into what at first sounds like total disorder. There’s also a strong sense of unity in how each song eventually comes together, and the album as a whole cohesively flows from one impressive moment to the next, ebbing and flowing between states of serenity and chaos.

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Take, for example, the lulling synthesizers of “Asleep,” which eventually gives way to a meticulous chain of twinkling bells that segue into “Nochnoi Avonok (Night Call),” a track rife with a string of stuttering disturbances courtesy of a Broken Orchestra sample pack. Or the exhilarating “Mi (We),” which features a smattering of clanking chimes and what sounds like jangly shekeres that rhythmically start and stop to create a mini-breakbeat jam.

This resoundingly magical album also takes inspiration from the improvisational likes of free-jazz pioneer Roscoe Mitchell all the way to James Ferraro’s equally innovative Far Side Virtual—with the latter’s influence felt most potently on “d d don’t,” where the repeatedly cooed lyric “I don’t” is situated over a series of rubbery synth lines straight out of Cubase VST. But these are only starting points for the creative mayhem that NV engages in.

Like perhaps few other albums in recent memory, Wow evokes a childlike wonder, where the difference between terms such as “music” and “noise” becomes almost meaningless. In NV’s world, anything and everything—including instruments, vocal onomatopoeias, and an assortment of insignificant aural textures—sounds like a perfectly placed part in the grand chaotic symphony of life itself. The splendid level of excitement the album engages in is exclaimed right from the very start via its interjected title. Wow, indeed.

Score: 
 Label: RVNG  Release Date: March 3, 2023  Buy: Amazon

Paul Attard

Paul Attard is a New York-based lifeform who enjoys writing about experimental cinema, rap/pop music, games, and anything else that tickles their fancy. Their writing has also appeared in MUBI Notebook.

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