Review Summary: A pink sunset for no one... but you.
There is something extremely captivating about Noveller's music that attracts ambient music aficionados and hardcore fans all alike. The masterful craftsmanship in her guitar sound, cultivated for many years alongside renowned composers like Rhys Chatham and having participated in extraordinary music ensembles and performances throughout extensive touring have helped Noveller's music to please a constantly growing and wider audience.
Brooklyn-based Sarah Lipstate took fly for the first time as Noveller back in 2009 with "Paint on the Shadows", her first daring experiment, an album well based on a double neck guitar sitting on her lap while loops and delayed strings twinkle with each other to form an outstanding piece of guitar extravaganza. Lipstate has been a constant and hard-working artist for a very long time. With a whooping album count of eight fantastic releases, "A Pink Sunset For No One" is her latest and long awaited follow-up to the already mind blowing "Fantastic Planet". What I found in her most recent work is a Noveller whose sound slightly relaxes the noisy distortion walls of her previous works in favor of well-defined melodies and textures, but keeping the intricate mystery surrounding the instrumentation used to build it, as every musician’s best kept secret should.
The album opens up with “Deep Shelter”, in which a soft chiptune line slowly blends and gives away to Eno-esque keys, soon to be confronted by a looming straight up piano; Noveller soon states that she intends to take the listener through a wide variety of magic landscapes and remarkable passages, distancing herself from extreme experimentation in favor of a more balsamic feel. The subtle and rarely use of vocals in the esoteric "Rituals", reminiscent of bands like Grails or even some Dead Can Dance, the classical bits in "Trails and Trials", drowned in unforgiving synths that would make any grown-up anchored in the 80s swoon with nostalgia, or the absolutely perfect sci-fi feel of "Corridors"; Noveller makes the most out of her songwriting skills, with an extraordinary selection of ingredients and spices, like a renowned chef, she knows how to boil and stew every sound bit and wave to melt the listener’s brain cells with aural pleasures.
The quasi-heavy metal ballad arpeggio of "Another Dark Hour", while synths gracefully dance on the background leads to the Tangerine Dream branded harshness of "Emergence", firmly closing Noveller's latest solitary release in what it may be one of the most solid ambient outputs of the year.
Not only was 2017 already shaping up as a great year for ambient music with new releases by Brian Eno, Matteo Vallicelli or William Basinski, Noveller now tops it proudly with this refreshing "A Pink Sunset For No One", an album that hopefully will serve you as one more color palette to paint the world as you wish.
