Embracing the polarities of abstract and popular music, Danny Turner chats to Kate NV about her idiosyncratic approach to sound

All images © Jenia Filatova

Kate Shilonosova emerged from the Russian indie music scene with the rock band Glintshake in 2012. However, as the solo artist Kate NV, her production style is unmistakably unique – as demonstrated on her goofy but enchanting debut album Binasu (2016) where Shilonosova mined her childhood to revisit the influence of ’80s Japanese pop, obscure children’s films and anime.

Further albums such as Room For The Moon offered renewed insight into Shilonosova’s unconventional approach to production. Playfully coalescing found sounds, chopped-up acoustic instruments and vocal samples, her forthcoming album Wow invites the listener to re-evaluate their perception of modern electronic pop once more.

You started as a vocalist/guitarist in the band Glintshake and are still in that band. Do you see it as a vehicle for your political views, whereas Kate NV is more abstract?

“For people who don’t make music, it’s easier to believe that the motives for making rock music are political but I believe that everything is political even for a person who makes ambient music. It’s really about selfreflection and your reaction to the context that surrounds you. Glintshake is a band with four people with very different characters and the way we communicate and make music is different to how I make my own, but it doesn’t mean that I’m out of touch with reality. Take, for example, the painter Barnett Newman who was trying to figure out how to exist and create art after WW2. He made the painting Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue, but there are no strokes so you can’t even tell if it was painted by a brush. That was his way to elaborate his reality and everybody’s approach is different.”

You’ve mentioned the word ‘fairytale’ in relation to your own music. Is that to do with wanting to return to the safety and innocence of childhood?

“Yes, for sure. I can’t make music when I’m stressed out or experiencing high levels of anxiety. I have to live through what is happening to me and try to turn it into music, which means finding a way for my thoughts to perceive reality and communicate them in an ironic or absurd way. Glintshake’s music is very sarcastic, but Kate NV is very self-reflective and intimate. On the previous record, Room For The Moon, I was feeling really lonely and felt I had no friends at all. It was my way of sending a message to the world and trying to find some friends, although that may sound very selfish.”