Scandinavian multi-instrumentalist SYLVAINE is now unveiling the second new song ‘Mono No Aware‘, which is taken from the upcoming fourth album ‘Nova‘. The album is scheduled for world-wide release on March 04, 2022 via Season of Mist. Pre-orders are available HERE.
SYLVAINE comments on the track: “The moment when you appreciate the beauty of our human existence and what lies within it being completely transient, yet feeling overcome by sadness for the exact same reason, that is “Mono No Aware”. Every Sylvaine record holds one song title that can’t be directly translated into English, and this time I felt the melancholy and depth of the Japanese saying “mono no aware” fit perfectly with the emotions that went into creating this record. Existing somewhere between nostalgia, a yearning for things lost and past times and a respect for the ephemeral nature of things, “Mono No Aware” basically deals with how hard it is to accept that the only constant in our existence is change. Being one of the heaviest tracks I wrote to date, “Mono No Aware” is filled with intensity in every way, pushing the borders of light and dark even further. This song also holds some of my favorite lyrics of the album; “You need to fade away, so I can truly see you. Show me the meaning of being alive – Fading, I see you now”
To speak to SYLVAINE, the one-woman multi-instrumentalist, bandleader, and composer born Kathrine Shepard, is to speak to some spirit that exists beyond the veil of convention and stereotypes. This is not a woman playing to the vogue dark melodic folklorist trope that has become so prevalent in the metal scene but rather, this is a woman who is a serious and classically trained composer and arranger whose songs, that originate on unplugged electric guitars in lavender and black bedrooms, end up exploding against the unlimited conventions of what modern music can accomplish.
For some time, Kathrine Shepard has been seen as the petite pixie of the Norwegian black gaze scene but her small eleven features and light heartedness belie the woman warrior behind ‘Nova’, her complex and personal fourth release. Following her 2018 ‘Atoms Aligned Coming Undone’ release, Sylvaine (a play on the name of one of her beloved French poets, Paul Verlaine) gives us ‘Nova’, an album that is both a musical and personal reawakening of a singer/composer finding her way in this world.
