City of Angels – Star Goes Nova (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

I suspect that Star Goes Nova isn’t hoping to do anything as crass or conceited as trying to invent a new genre, after all, what would even be the point? Rather, this sounds like someone making music unburdened by such baggage in the first place. And, once such concepts have been dropped, the sonic world becomes a free and open place to mix and match inspirations, feed and fuse any and every sonic urge to the heart’s content.

And that is what is happening here. Depending on which sonic thread you pull at first you will be greeted by ultra-modern dance grooves, classical moods and motifs, big, bombastic beats and pulsing basslines, old-school piano lines, forward-thinking dubstep trips, shimmering electronica or chiming synths. It is hard to imagine what, if anything, Christine Law, the steady and adventurous hand on Star Goes Nova’s creative tiller, could have possibly left out.

It’s a marriage of groove and grace, beat and beauty, familiar traditions and forward-thinking, futurism and fantasy. It’s a lot to fit into one song, but she does so both elegantly and eloquently.