Novo Line

Novo Line

Dyad

Ecstatic Recordings

Novo Line returns with a new disc of Algorithmic Body Music® for Ecstatic engineered to be played at both 33 and 45. It’s a stubbornly innovative twist on late ‘80s and early ‘90s dance music; If yr into anything from Aphex Twin to DAF, Front 242 to Powell - or generally like your club music analogue, fffuckkked yet still forward thinking, this one’s for you.  Novo Line reprises the meter-messing genius of his Movements album with Dyad - exclusively using the tools of ’88/’89 professional recording set-ups - namely the Atari ST, but with a slight algorithmic alteration. While it’s increasingly hard to find new tricks in old gear, especially with the resurgence of hardware fetishism and the ubiquity of DAWs, that’s exactly what Nat Fowler has been doing for the best part of a decade as Novo Line. By, in his own words, “misusing one algorithmic composition program (not, by a longshot, a professional music production tool of any epoch) contained in 208kb of data on a 3.5” floppy disk”, He generates and explores new permutations of old music which, ironically enough, sound fresher or at least more innovative than a lot of new music in circulation right now.  The release poses a playful question: can a record be ambivalent as to which speed it should be played? Celebrating vinyl and futhermore physical media, the listener is encouraged to find their exact speed of preference with the RPM toggle and pitch slider, that nearly forgotten joy in...

Novo Line

Movements

Ecstatic Recordings

2016’s most meticulous album of Algorithmic Body Music, Chicago house and Belgian new beat, made by the guy who delivered that insane “For Promotional Use Only” white label for Diagonal, produced on malfunctioning software with two Atari ST PCs, using Yamaha FM synthesis via MIDI... Following that amazing 12” for Diagonal and a limited tape release for Ecstatic, Berlin’s Nat Fowler renders his meticulous Novoline for its second full-length release, a killer marriage of automated EBM and unexpected midi disruptions, continuing a lifelong quest for esoteric knowledge and a love of archaic computer hardware.Modelled on re-appropriated software, run on two separate Atari ST's, Movements is the compelling result of obtuse production technique and painstaking trial and error; basically experimentation at the service of discovering a sound that really sounds unlike anything else out there. As he explains: “I like the idea of using restrictions in order to find and push boundaries, from limiting which octaves I use to how many notes at a time. I use the only PC capable of MIDI that had no multitasking, so communication is immediate, a direct mechanical communication from my fingers to the sounds is created. I feel lucky because technology has accelerated so fast since the first digital synthesisers and PCs that nothing since the early 1980s has been really pushed to its limits.” In that sense, he can be placed in a small category of operators - including The Automatics Group, Dave Noyze, Lorenzo Senni and V/Vm among them - who persistently...

Novo Line

Live Aus Der Spielothek

Ecstatic Recordings

Killer “Algorithmic Body Music” from the canny cat behind that "For Promotional Use Only" 12" on Diagonal! Not Waving’s Ecstatic label grip a bendy-as-f**k live recording of (deep breath) “alternatively-tuned polyphonic multi-rhythmic live-mixed live-generated parameter based unrendered unsequenced spontaneous improvised electronic music” performed (?) by Novo Line at Berlin’s Sameheads club night in December, 2015. Using a software program on a 720kb floppy written in 1988, run on two x Atari ST PCs using only era-consistent hardware FM synthesis via MIDI, it’s nothing if not authentically retro, but also proves there’s latent, vital life in outmoded gear, provided you’re willing to look hard enough.  Like his aforementioned For Promotional Use Only 12”, everything’s yoked to a mesmerisingly sluggish pace, which is perhaps necessary as the spiky, curdling, and discordant sequence of events carries so much repetitive - yet subtly morphing - information that it may be genuinely psychotomimetic at higher tempos. To be honest, we’re a bit baffled at mention of his current actions “reflecting research in the fringe fields of electrical theory with relation to pythagorean tuning systems”, but it should prompt some interesting wikipedia mooches later on. Ultimately, it sounds like something hypothesised by boffins at IPEM’s secret darkrooms circa ’88, and that cannot be a bad thing in any freak's estimations.