Lobsterfest Q&A: Noveller
By Abbie Doyle, Editorial Director
Noveller, the solo project of avant-garde artist Sarah Lipstate, is gracing Lobsterfest 2015 on Saturday night at Arts West. Despite an exhausting and busy touring schedule, Lipstate gave some of her time to ACRN Media to answer a few questions about her career, her sources of inspiration and a positive reinforcement to stay in school.
The size of your discography is very impressive. How long have you been making music?
I recorded the earliest Noveller tracks in 2005 but I didn't start playing live with this project until 2007 when I moved from Austin to Brooklyn. It's hard to believe that I've been making music under the Noveller moniker for eight years now but I appreciate the things that I've learned over that time. The experiences of touring and making albums have helped me shape this project into something that excites and inspires me.
How has your style evolved over this time? What did you pick up, what did you do away with?
When I first started Noveller I definitely viewed the guitar more as just a sound source than an instrument. I used a double-neck guitar that was so heavy I couldn't wear it so I would lay it flat on a keyboard stand, which led to me playing it in a non-traditional way. I remember once I just played the guitar by dropping chains onto the strings. After recording my first LP Paint on the Shadows I started experimenting with adding a regular six-string guitar to my setup. That's when the project took a turn towards more melodic composition and I focused on learning to actually play the guitar.
You’re also a filmmaker; do these two artistic mediums ever collide? In what ways? Or do you try to keep them separate?
I love creating visuals to accompany my live shows. I work with hand-painted 16mm film and I feel that it complements my music beautifully. I approach both mediums in similar ways and feel incredibly satisfied when I have to opportunity to showcase both in a single performance.
In what ways do you nurture your creativity?
I seek out inspiration as much as I can from as many different sources as I can. I'm a very active reader and I feel that indulging my book habit benefits me creatively as much as listening to a record or going to a show. I usually read fiction but lately I've been on a memoir kick, which I've found to be inspiring in a different way. It started with Kim Gordon's Girl in a Band which I received duplicate copies of for my birthday in March. I loved Kim's writing and was craving more, so I followed her book with Patti Smith's Just Kids, which I'd heard numerous people rave about. I also picked up Viv Albertine's Clothes Clothes Clothes Music Music Music Boys Boys Boys, which was a great read while I was traveling across the country on my tour with The Soft Moon. I'm currently reading Philip Glass' new memoir Words Without Music.
What was it like to compose the score for Pangaea? Could you tell us a bit about that experience--how you became involved, what sort of work you had to do for it, the outcome?
The Pangaea short film was my third collaboration with filmmakers Sharon Shattuck and Flora Lichtman. I love composing music for their animations and working on Pangaea was so much fun because most of the story was set in the arctic, which as a landscape seems to suit my musical sensibility really well. I used mainly synth and piano for the score though the guitar provided an ambient foundation for some of the segments. Watching the three short films that we've done together, I feel that my composing abilities and their animation style have evolved so much and that we have all really benefited from our collaboration.
Could you tell us about your involvement with SXSW, in a visual capacity as well as musical?
I started applying to showcase my experimental short films and my band at SXSW while I was still in college in Austin. To my surprise, my student film projects were accepted into the SXSW film festival for two years in a row and at the same time my band One Umbrella was also invited to play as part of the SXSW music festival. It was an amazing experience for me as a young film student and aspiring musician and showed me that my creative pursuits had value and potentially even an audience! This year was the first time that Noveller performed at the festival and I felt like I'd come full circle. I owe a lot to the Austin creative scene and can say that festivals like SXSW benefitted me the most by giving me the confidence to believe that I could follow my passions (however avant-garde they may be) and I'd eventually find an audience.
Since this is a college music festival, I’ve gotta ask about the relevancy of your college degree. A Bachelor’s in Radio-Television-Film, from U of Texas... how has it helped your career? Has it? God I hope so.
My RTF degree probably benefitted me the most by helping me get hired at the first few jobs I had in NYC when I moved there in January 2007, immediately following my graduation from UT in December 2006. I gave myself exactly one month, the length of my sublet in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn, to find a job that would provide me the income I’d need to get an apartment and take a shot at living in New York. My first day job was working for a tiny 3D Animation company that did graphics for shows on the History Channel and HGTV. After that I worked for a digital media startup called iAmplify. I eventually got fired from that job because I kept asking for time off so I could go on tour with the rock band I'd joined, Parts & Labor. Luckily, I have survived now without a day job since 2013.
How did you get signed on for Lobsterfest?
Hard work and a bit of charm.
What should Lobsterfest attendees expect during Noveller’s set?
Some killer live versions of songs off my newest album Fantastic Planet which came out in January on Fire Records as well as all the classics. Total guitar bliss.
