Kate NV – WOW

It’s hard to imagine a better title for Kate Shilonosova’s latest album than WOW. The Russian songwriter, best known as Kate NV, has always approached music with a childlike curiosity; her compositions wavering between a genuine post-internet pop and the iconoclastic product of outsider art.

Created using the Found Sound Nation’s Broken Orchestra sample pack (a catalogue of over one thousand dilapidated instruments sourced from Philadelphia public schools), WOW is a veritable magpie’s nest of xylophones, guiros, subtly daubed electronics and the amplified hiss of boiling water. Some tracks, such as d d don’t and confessions at the dinner table sound like they were recorded at an amusement park, their cartoonish bursts of noise the perfect soundtrack to a children’s party gone horribly wrong. Elsewhere, the featherweight electronica of songs like asleep and meow chat induces a Pavlovian longing for 16-bit video games and their promise of adventure.