Last month we premiered the video for Nova Neon’s track, ‘Geek Freak’. Now, ahead of the release of their debut album, ‘CHROMA’, which will be accompanied by a launch at The Lounge, London, on September 3o, we’ve asked them Six Quick Questions.
EP: What’s the Nova Neon story? Who are you, how did you come to be performing together, describe your music?
NN: We’re 5 Londoners that mostly didn’t know each other before this project got put together. Through knowing different people the 5 of us got together and started jamming some material, a couple of years later, here we are with our first album due out on the 30th Sept. Weirdly we all get on incredibly well. No egos! It’s a bit of collaborative project, where we’ve pretty much pulled in every creative we know to help us develop our profile, from photoshoots to videos and artwork, but we have been at the heart of all the decisions.
Our music is a little electro, a little rock/indie and a little bit of pop and soul. It’s a lot of things but it’s definitely us. We’ve had a lot of interesting reviews but one that really stood out for us was being called ‘Heavy Pop’. That really works we think.
EP: Talk us through ‘Geek Freak’. What’s it all about?
NN: Geek Freak is about the everyday struggles that we all encounter at some point in our lives. We all get advice on how to act, how to behave, how to react, but it’s all just part of the process. I guess the message is that, it doesn’t truly matter, we are all geeks and freaks in our own way just trying to get by in the best possible way.
EP: You’ve got a few gigs coming up over the next few weeks – what can people expect from your show?
NN: Well we have 4 back to back to promote the album and we’re playing at different venues that require a different sound. The Bedford is a bit of a lounge atmosphere, so we’re gonna ditch the heavy sound and electronics and play some tunes really stripped back. Then we’ve got 2 full band shows where we’re going to play the full album start to end as it is on the record, 11 tracks. The big one is at The Lounge in Archway on Sept 30th, The final show is for Sofar Sounds at an secret location, this is super stripped back so no PA. We just turn up as a 5 piece with some basic gear and go for it. These are super fun and great for music lovers as they are very intimate.
EP: What’s the dynamic of the group, are you a democracy or is there one of you who is more able to sway than the rest?
NN: We are truly a democracy. Good thing their’s 5 of us otherwise we’d never get anything done split down the middle. We just decided the album cover and that was tense, 3 to 2. Two of us were clearly bitter after. Everyone is quite vocal and opinionated about decisions but we get there. As always there’s some of us better at some things then others so we tend to let that person do their thing and trust them.
EP: What does the future hold for Nova Neon?
NN: We really want to make this project popular and grow our fan base. We see ourselves as a Pyramid stage band one day, and we know we’ve gotta work hard for that. At the moment the focus is getting this debut album out and getting some traction behind it. We’re super proud of it and we’ve had some industry interest but the right deal hasn’t really come along yet. After the album launch we’ll do a few more singles, remixes and see how we get on from there.
EP: What question do you wish someone would ask you in an interview, but nobody ever does?
NN: Most of us are really techy and proud of our live set up, because we use a lot of electronics without backing tracks, so it’s all live, but no one really asks about that. I guess no ones wants to know the how the music gets played, they just wanna enjoy it. We’d love it though if we got asked about the sounds and gear we use, we’d have a field day.
You can find Nova Neon online on Facebook, Soundcloud, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. ‘Geek Freak’ is available on iTunes, Bandcamp, Spotify, and Soundcloud.
See here for further details of their album launch at The Lounge.
