Safia Nolin presents UFO RELIGION: “What I do best is still music”

Safia Nolin will present a new album, UFO RELIGIONOctober 18 – a clear answer to the doubts of those who still question its place in the musical universe.

After several years of sporadic creations and extraordinary projects, the singer-songwriter will unveil a work that is both minimalist and full of meaning, a series of dark pieces without artifice, inviting you to take a moment to relax.

I wanted to stay with something very simpleshe explains in an interview.

In recent years, I have been diagnosed with ADHD. I stopped my medication, because I found it really difficult to create when I was taking it and it’s so noisy in my head, she confides. There’s a lot of stuff going on all the time, and then I really wanted to cut out all the sounds and go back to something really small.

It is this desire for paring down and purification which permeates every note of his new album. UFO RELIGION was produced in eight days in a chalet in Estrie with the help of Marc-André Labelle, with whom she shares guitars.

Ode au commencement

If in his most recent full album, In the dark (2018), published under the Bonsound label, Safia Nolin had outlined complex musical structures, this time she chose a raw approach to the raw material, a simple recording, conceived as an independent artist. I wanted to return to my beginnings, to my bases, with folk music, guitar-voiceshe says, citing American artist Adrianne Lenker (Big Thief) as a major influence in this approach.

Independence is felt in the creative approach based on immediacy: All the money comes out of my bank account, laughs Safia. I like it. It makes it more real and it changes the timelines. It hasn’t been very long since I told my team that I wanted to release the album in the fall and they trusted me.

Listening only to her need to slow down and unravel the frantic rhythm of our era, the musician opts for minimalist musical production which becomes a way of exploring silences and the depth of emotions. You know, when they say that silence can be loud, then deafening… In my head, that’s what I wanted to explore. Then I needed calm, emotions that are not camouflaged behind lots of arrangementsshe delivers.

She thus embodies a response to the social climate, to the speed of consumption of culture – especially music – at this fast pace which no longer allows for downtime and which can come to suffocate artists, according to her.

I think I would like people to remember that I make music and that I’m not just an argumentative person, and I would like it to do good for the world to listen to that. People like to piss me off every time I open my mouth, and even when I’m not doing anything, but what I do best is still music.

By creating a record again, the singer-songwriter hopes to thumb her nose at the detractors who have so often brandished the message: So make music instead of speaking.

If heaven could deliver us

The title of the album, UFO RELIGIONis drawn from the Internet searches that Safia Nolin really likes to do. I came across some kind of alien cult. People who don’t believe in God, but are instead waiting for beings from another planet to come and save ussays Safia Nolin, amused.

This reflection on humanity delicately runs through the album of the woman who for many years has received the cruelest pettiness, but above all, the most violent threats. Without joining any cult, the musician can easily let herself be coaxed by the crazy idea of ​​an entity that can complete her torture.

Thematically, Safia Nolin evokes on her new record all relationships through the end of the world. His outlook, more honest and realistic than fundamentally pessimistic, illustrates the duality between his love for people and his awareness of planetary, social and political collapse.

I’m not talking about politics, but for me, it’s political, because it’s against the grain of what people are doing right now. For me, it’s the end of the world, and at the same time, I love everyone and I hope we don’t all die. We’ve been feeling the end of the world for a few years now, right?

Far from being a desperate work, UFO RELIGION is rather an invitation to awareness. I see it as preparation for crashsupports the artist. This disc, in my head, is the image of the defense position, the protective reflex that you have before making a crash of tank. I’m bracing ourselves for impact.

By encouraging a collective detachment from the sensory overload of everyday life, Safia Nolin also offers an album that can be consumed in our own way. She thus repels the stress of imposing a work that cannot be fragmented. We have to let go of the pressure so that everyone listens to the album in the same way. If people only listen to one song, I’m happy. UFO RELIGION listens well from A to Z and it was constructed as a single long song. But if you need to listen to three minutes, half an hour, or half a tune, so be it.

This detached, almost casual approach reflects a new phase in Safia Nolin’s career, focused on her art and freed – at least for the moment – ​​from the gaze of others and their expectations.

Finally free

In djurdjurathe artist evokes his Algerian family roots and the mountain range of the same name, often mentioned by his father. Although the song does not directly address her relationship with him, it does speak to identity, childhood, and the weight of growing up between two cultures. I don’t speak Arabic and I don’t sing in Arabic either, but I think I’d like to learn eventuallyshe whispers.

On shroomsthe only piece in English on the album, she describes her relationship with the microdose of mushrooms, which she uses as an escape from certain complex situations. I think among other things of the moments, in the fall or in the spring when it is cold, but for a moment we find ourselves facing a warm ray of sunlight and we enjoy this time, suspended in the warmth of a ray , to escape everything else. Microdosing helps me get deep into these momentsshe expresses.

Stéphane Lafleur (With no helmet) wrote a piece, our evil tonguesfor Safia Nolin, a song of regaining power, a solid affirmation of oneself in which tenderness allows one to regain the upper hand over the worst. Safia Nolin also sings pizzaghettia letter of friendship to his canine friend, which we could hear during the show Monitored and punished.

Throughout the creation of new songs, Safia Nolin confides that she discovered a constantly renewed feeling of power by recording with a small team, guitars in the open air, at the edge of a river or near a campfire, which gives the album an organic atmosphere, anchored in the landscape.

Safia Nolin is back. Free, embodied and in full possession of his means which have so often been compromised.

UFO RELIGION will be available from October 18.