Kate NV
★★★★
WOW
RVNG INTL. DL/LP
Russian artist’s fifth album: intriguingly out-there, playful electronica.
With loops, lo-fi electronics and otherworldliness, Russian musician Kate Shilonosova forges a multi-layered record that’s charming and endlessly diverting. Her tools are unorthodox: notes created by samples drawn from malfunctioning instruments from the Philadelphia schools system, vocals that are often just squeaks or tics, and idiosyncratic found sounds, like a wind-up chattering teeth toy. D D Don’t – the titles are equally quirky – is a case in point, packed with blips, glitches and whirrs. Shilonosova is singing something that sounds like English, but can we be sure? Part of the fun is guessing the sound. Is that someone flicking their cheek? WOW’s melodies and motifs are pretty with a dash of strange – Asleep is a soothing lullaby delivered as an electronic waltz, Flu like a Dutch barrel organ recital gone feral. There are hints of Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, while Japanese electronic sound experimentalist Nobukazu Takemura is an acknowledged influence, but Kate NV remains thrillingly individual.