Nova Soon (aka Noah de Grunwald) is a 24-year-old Norwich-based songwriter, poet & classical guitarist, playing ‘space folk’ songs: whose intricate nylon-string fingerpicking & poignant, jazz-inflected melodies underpin storytelling lyrics about mortality, loss, & the far depths of the cosmos. 29.11.19 will see the release of ‘YOU ARE ALIVE’ — the debut studio album, from which ‘Matter & Space’ — a jaunty yet haunting jazz-pop number celebrating cosmic insignificance — is the second single (following 2018’s ‘Let’s Be Vampires’).
Written slowly between the ages of 19 & 24, but finished in the shadow of his father’s sudden passing, the 7-track album forms a sonic journey through a cascade of similarly tender, pivotal moments from Noah’s formative years — from falling into the warmth of a lover’s bed in midwinter (‘Lamp Burning Low’), to first hearing about death from his mother as a child (‘Let’s Be Vampires’); from an unexpected quasi-religious rapture after drunkenly watching The Vampire Diaries (‘Series Six, Episode One (The Poem)’), to receiving an invitation to his first love’s wedding (‘Neverlife’).
Musically, the poetic acoustics of de Grunwald’s classical guitar-playing are buoyed throughout by swooping arrangements of strings, piano & night-sky electronics from multi-instrumentalist producer James Grantham — resulting in a sound Noah likens to ‘Nick Drake jamming to a 50’s film score from aboard a space shuttle’.
Lasting just 30 minutes, yet epic in its scope, ‘YOU ARE ALIVE’ is the ultimate distillation of a life spent under the cruel, beautiful starfield of Planet Earth; a life ultimately sweetened & enriched by its expiry date. As the album’s gauntlet-throwing opening lyric puts it: ‘Wake up. Wake up, ‘cos everything dies.’
Since 2018, Nova Soon has been regularly releasing singles & playing well-received solo gigs around Norfolk — including festival appearances at Trunchonbury, Extinction Rebellion, & Oxjam, plus slots supporting the likes of True Adventures & Billy Lubach. A monthly series of home-recorded singles in 2019 received regular airplay & rave reviews from BBC Introducing in Norfolk — culminating in national radio play on BBC Radio 6 in September for ‘Nearby Bridges’, a story song tackling male suicide, soon to be featured in the credits of While We Wait (a Norwich documentary about the UK’s mental health crisis).
As Two Circles, Noah also released two well-received folk albums with his late father, Nick: a film producer & longtime songwriter, who taught a 13-year-old Noah his first guitar chords (to Neil Young’s Love Is A Rose). Their harmonious, Simon & Garfunkel-influenced sound garnered flattering reviews in Mojo & Uncut magazines & spawned singles such as ‘Ballet In A Snowstorm’ (written by Noah in 2014) & ‘Lodestar’, which received regular national radio play on Tom Robinson’s BBC 6 Music show in 2018.
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