FEATURE: Spotlight: Nova Twins — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: @arwimages

Nova Twins

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THIS duo have been around for a while…

but as they released an album back in February and they are getting a lot of love right now, I thought it was a good time to include them in Spotlight. I have known about Nova Twins for a couple of years, and there are few acts like them around. I think there is still a perception that Rock is reserved for white men, and Georgia South and Amy Love are dispelling that; striking back and trying to change things. I want to bring in an article from The Guardian, - from 2016, who highlight this amazing, rising duo:

“Nova Twins are all about that bass: the lurching, grinding, seismically distorted, FX-mangled sound that propels the music of this young London duo: Georgia South, 19, and Amy Love, who is in her early 20s (Tim Nugent, no relation to Ted, adds drums). They call it urban punk but elsewhere their bass-heavy racket with irascible, sharply insinuating vocals has been variously titled hip hop-grime, grime-pop/“grop”, even “grunk”, such is their furious collision of grime and punk. “We are females of colour playing heavy music,” declares Love, who alternately sings (term used advisedly) and raps, with backing squeals from South. “Sometimes we have to shout a little bit louder. We don’t want to be pigeonholed.” Their heroes range from MC5 to Missy Elliott, Skunk Anansie to Skepta, and they get a broad demographic at their increasingly populous gigs, although to date they have attracted more punks and rockers than grime kids.

“Because our sound and delivery is so intense, and because we do it all live, without laptops or any programming, some grime people are put off,” explains Love. “But we want it to be more open – we want diversity in our audience ’cos that’s what we are,” she says of their mixed parentage. “We want guys in snapbacks next to guys with mohawks and nose rings. That would be amazing.”

“When we were younger and slightly more vulnerable, someone pissed us off, trying to make us sound less live, reduce the power of the bass and make us sound American,” recalls Love. “He was expecting us to be more pop, thinking, ‘That’s a bit heavy.’ So we walked out, and he walked out. But we’re not making music for the record industry, we’re making it for us.”

“People do stereotype us,” adds South. “We’re both mixed [race] and we play guitars, so straight away we get, ‘Oh, you girls are going to be singing some R&B,’ and it’s like, ‘Oh come on, educate yourself!”

It is still a time when women are vastly under-represented in music, and festival line-ups are especially shocking and skewed in favour of male artists. Nova Twins know this and they are desperate for things to change. Their album, Who Are the Girls?, is one of the finest of this year, and I think Nova Twins will be playing a lot of festivals when things start to get back to normal. At the moment, I would recommend that you buy that album, and witness a fantastic duo primed for big things!

I want to bring in an interview they gave to Louder Sound in February, just before the release of their album - and it is clear that Nova Twins are definitely always evolving and looking ahead:

“Looking into the future, the duo seem interested in progressing their music further and trying out new things in their sound. “We are where we are now,” Love says. “I think album four might end up with a synth, who knows.”

Their new label 333 Wreckords Crew, founded by Fever 333's Jason Butler, is something the duo are sincerely excited to be a part of. Instead of a standard label, it’s defined as an ‘artist-orientated collective’. “You don’t always feel backed because everyone is struggling to get to one place or another, so it’s hard for artists to look out for each other,” says Love. “But Jason’s been like, ‘we have to look out for each other’ and we totally agree with that.”

The duo are aware they're outnumbered in the rock industry – not only are they women, but women of colour – and that the odds are stacked against them in such a male-dominated industry. They experienced it first-hand at some of the festivals they played in 2019. During rock and metal festival Download, for example, the girls noticed they were two of seven women on the line up. “We feel like we need to represent all the women and people of colour [at the festival]” says South. “When we walk around, we cannot see our reflection.”

Instead of seeing it as a downside, the girls see it as a challenge. In the next decade, they want to further promote the movement of a diverse audience at rock shows. “We want to change it up and try and make it more open, so more people can be involved in heavy music.

"Because everyone has an influence on the culture – rock and punk – but it doesn’t necessarily let everyone in. So we’re trying to do that”.

I am going to bring in a couple more pieces that highlight the awesomeness of Nova Twins, as I have been intrigued and bowled over by their music got a very long time. Before their debut album, I heard the tracks they released, but I think one gets a bigger and clearer story with the album regarding who Nova Twins are and what their music represents. I think the next year or two will be crucial when it comes to making changes in the music industry so that those at the top are replaced as we can see discussion, progression and, above all, effective change regarding inequality. Things are not moving forward quickly enough! When Nova Twins spoke with NME, they were asked about the political tones in their album and what can be done to make Rock music less white and male-heavy:

“Hey Nova Twins. What did you feel you had to prove with your debut album?

Amy: “As women and especially as women of colour, you do come against a lot of stereotypes and challenges. This album was us proving a point.

Georgia: “There are no synths, no backing track and no other writers. It’s just us.”

Amy: “So when we do play it live, nobody can say anything ‘cos its going to sound like the record. We can do it all, no matter how much hopscotching we’re doing on the pedals to make it happen.”

Would you say it’s a political album?

Amy: “Being black women doing punk music is political, so yes. ‘Devil’s Face’ touches on Brexit, ‘Bullet’ speaks about sexism, but ‘Athena’ is completely fictional and mythological. We called it ‘Who Are The Girls?’ because we didn’t always feel heard or accepted making the type of music we do, looking the way that we do. It’s definitely challenging and there is a stigma attached to it.”

Georgia: “When we play these festivals, we’re the only people that look like us on these bills and a majority of the audience would never have seen a band like us, so we need to be the best band possible so their whole perception of black women playing rock music is changed. We wanted to be the voices for the unheard.”

What kind of impact did not seeing people of colour in rock music have on you?

Georgia: “You wonder if you can even be in a heavy band because you don’t see anyone else doing it.”

Amy: “It also affects people in ways they don’t even realise. They start trying to dull themselves down to fit in, but when you try and fit into somewhere you will never, ever belong because your existence doesn’t lend itself to that, it becomes really psychologically damaging. You start questioning yourself and that quickly becomes self-hatred. It took me a long time to accept myself.”

Georgia: “We feel this responsibility to make sure no one else feels like that”.

What can be done to make rock music less straight, white and male?

Georgia: “All we’re asking for is the same chances and opportunities. It needs to start from the top, get rid of tokenism and hire more people of colour but the power is with the audience too. If you support a band, buy their merch, go to shows, you’re giving them power. If you keep supporting POC in alternative music, it’ll become undeniable and they’ll have to be heard”.

I will leave things here, but I want to bring in a review for Who Are the Girls? that underlines what an important album it is. It is one of my favourite from 2020, and I think Nova Twins will get bigger and better with each release! This is what CLASH wrote when they reviewed the album:

“Nova Twins’ pedalboards have also grown exponentially since 2016, when their reputation for grotty, pitch-shifted assaults of distortion earned them the label ‘grime-punk’. It’s not an unfair description. South’s basslines are what supercharge the songs, leading from the bottom with a dirty, street-gutter rumble that attains absolute perfection on lead single ‘Taxi’. When paired with Love’s delivery, the music can resemble the heavier cuts from Skepta and Tempa T, but they just as often deviate into the realms of UK garage, or rave, or even dubstep.

Both ‘Play Fair’ and ‘Bullet’ end with full-on wub-a-dub freakouts that owe a debt to the likes of Caspa and Rusko, while ‘Undertaker’ genuinely sounds like it could have been painstakingly pieced together out of re-pitched Rage Against The Machine tracks by The Prodigy’s Liam Howlett.

While their peers are busy taking on board smooth-edged American influences and trying to become the next Imagine Dragons, Nova Twins’ sound remains 100% homegrown British beefiness. There are many people out there from across the rap-rock spectrum who will despise this album (for reasons both fair and foul), but there are many more who will appreciate the lack of compromise in this rollicking call to arms. You have never heard two women have this much fun with a metric fucktonne of distortion pedals, but if you do in the future, then the way will have been paved by Nova Twins”.

If you have not discovered the amazing Nova Twins, then follow them online and make sure that you keep an eye on them! They are an amazing duo and I think they will be huge names very soon. This year has been pretty bad but, with Nova Twins’ music out there, 2020 has provided us with some…