NOVUSTORY – AN INTERVIEW WITH ANNE ESTELLA
Northern powerhouse rockers Novustory, fronted by Imogen Storey, are set to release their latest track, “Love Me Too”, which explores their relentless journey through the music industry. From starting out as a ‘DIY’ band with no industry contacts, to being signed by Regent Street Records and working with a whole host of celebrities along the way, Novustory are proving that hard work and determination really do pay off. This is the story of a band who rose from the bottom, built their own recording studio and are now helping other musicians thrive during turbulent times.
This is Novustory…
[ANNE] Why don’t we start with the present… You’ve been working on a track with Adam Cecil Bartlett (U2, Biffy Clyro, The Amazons, Katie Melua, Nothing But Thieves), with vocal assistance from Stevie Lange (Led Zeppelin, Robbie Williams, Rita Ora, ACDC). What can you tell us about the new song, “Love Me Too”, and how did this incredible collaboration came about?
[NOVUSTORY] “Love Me Too” was born from a particularly bad day I had as a musician, following a series of setbacks that just left me thinking, what’s the point? We graft, and we graft, and we graft, and for every 100 things we apply for we might get one response, and whilst on the outside we have been told we look like we’re ‘making waves’ or ‘paving the way’, on the inside it sometimes feels like you’re fighting a losing battle, because for every one amazing experience it feels like there are a multitude of
shitty ones!
I might be being totally self-absorbed and naïve here, but in any other industry it feels like there are a series of steps you can take to ‘be successful’… If you’re an athlete you have to run the fastest, jump the furthest, swim the most laps; in accountancy, dentistry, any other industry it looks like there are a series of steps and hoops you have to jump through to get to the next level, but ultimately if you put the work in
you reap the benefits, you get that promotion, you get those repeat clients following the customer satisfaction that comes when you’re doing a great job.
With music however, it can sometimes feel like no matter how much work you put in the output doesn’t match the input. And that’s what “Love Me Too” is about. It’s about caring so much, and wanting to take people along on the ride. It sounds desperate, but I just want people to care. I want the to stream us, to share us, to love what we do and believe in us as much as we believe in ourselves.
In music it can sometimes feel like it doesn’t matter how good you are or how much effort you put in, you have to know a guy who knows a guy’ or you have to flash the cash, and if you don’t have the contacts or the cash, then you really are relying on hard work and luck, and sometimes you can do the hard work part and it can feel like you’re experiencing none of the luck.
It sometimes feels like you’re always the bridesmaid, never the bride… like it’s all about facts, figures, statistics, how many likes and views you can afford to buy and not about how much your music can make people feel – if you could only reach them.
On a slightly happier note, working with Cecil Bartlett was absolutely incredible. We learnt so much as a band and gelled so well with him as a producer. We ended up working with him because our label wanted to see how we’d sound working with a high profile producer. We’ve gotten used to just recording our own tracks ourselves in our own studio, and the consensus was that it would do us good to hear how we’d sound if our overall sound was being shaped by an outside force and not by members within the band. We contacted so many producers ourselves and eventually decided Cecil was the best fit at that moment in time.
[ANNE] The music video for “Love Me Too” features one of Britain’s most celebrated stars of comedy, Tez Ilyas (Mock The Week, Live At The Apollo, Netflix’s Man Like Mobeen, Channel 4’s The Tez O’Clock Show)! With Tez being from your neck of the woods, did you already know him? How did you approach him to take part in your video and what was he like to work with?
[NOVUSTORY] Working with Tez was also amazing – this came about because after building our studio in Blackburn we were posting left right and centre online about our studio services, and a book publisher saw our posts by chance and asked if we recorded audiobooks. Tez was about to release a book and wanted to record an audiobook and we had never done one before, but of course we said yes. And it went wonderfully! The publisher didn’t want to send Tez all the way to London for a week so wanted to see if it
would work finding a studio in his hometown and working remotely, and it was a dream in the end.
After gelling with Tez when he was in the studio, the next time he needed some recording doing for voiceover work (for Just Eat adverts before Love Island!), his agent approached us and again we said yes, we booked him in, we had a laugh when he was in the studio, and a friendship was forged. Then, when we recorded this track with Cecil, we asked him if he’d feature in the video in return for some future studio time, and he said yes.
That’s it really. He booked into the studio that we built, he liked it, we made him feel welcome, he liked us, we bonded, then when it came to recording our video we asked him if he’d feature in return for more studio time. I feel this is how 99% of our opportunities have come about, by us putting ourselves out there, bugging people, offering our services or offering favours and helping someone out last minute.
[ANNE] Do you have any other collaborations in the pipeline, or a wish-list of other celebrities you’d like to
work with?
[NOVUSTORY] In terms of collaborations all I’ll say is keep an eye on the page because we have a lot planned for 2022!
[ANNE] Novustory are remarkable in many ways, one of which being that you built your very own recording studio, Esche Haus, as you’ve touched upon. What made you decide to go down that route and which other bands have recorded there so far?
[NOVUSTRORY] Thank you for your kind words about the band! In terms of building our own studio, we always wanted to make music full time. James and I are the original members of the band who are still in the band now from when it formed six years ago, and when we first became a band we both did music degrees and felt a little bit like outcasts because when other people were out getting smashed we spent the majority of our student loans on music equipment so we could record ourselves in the shed behind James’s Mum and Dad’s house.
Our collection of equipment grew, and when we started posting music online, other bands asked if they could record with us and the studio just grew and grew from there until the point where we had built up enough equipment, skills and customer base to be able to build our own place in Blackburn where we have now recorded/videoed and been featured by the likes of the BBC, ITV, United Utilities, Lottery
Winners, Marisa & The Moths, Bastette, GLAMOUR & more!
I do feel privileged as a musician, in terms of my upbringing. I believe I had a privileged upbringing – but I don’t mean this in monetary terms. I’ve had to work hard for money to be able to buy equipment and do what we do. I worked at Tesco for five years, I’ve worked in cafes, shops, James worked in Vue, then in Curry’s as a cleaner… we’ve always had to work part time jobs to make money because it’s not something we were able to just ‘run to Mummy and Daddy for’ (no offence to anybody who can do this, more power to you if you’re born into a rich family and you choose to invest it into your art!)
When I say I’ve had a privileged upbringing, what I mean is I have been fortunate enough to have parents who have allowed me to live at home, rent free, whilst I built up my business and lived out my dream. James’s parents were the same. Whilst neither sets of our parents could just pummel a load of money into the band and get us rich and famous, they provided us with a nurturing environment that enabled us
to grow as artists. And we used that environment to build up our business, graft as hard as we could and ultimately are now able to go to work every day within the music industry knowing that we’re here because we grafted, put our hearts and souls into our art and chased every opportunity going.
[ANNE] As a hard-working ‘DIY’ band, you’ve attained many goals since you started out, including signing a record deal with Regent Street Records in London. Tell us about the deal you signed, and how the label first heard about and approached you?
[NOVUSTORY] Regent Street Records approached us after finding us on Alyx Holcombs’ Alyx Plays Punk Spotify playlist. We contacted Alyx after she was recommended to us by Jon Mahon from Kerrang! When we Instagram DM’d him asking for a play and he said he couldn’t play us but Alyx might be able to on her show.
Regent Street contacted us, explained that they were an artist focused, ethically run label who completely aligned with our values and vision, and we drove down to London to sign our first record deal! The deal is fantastic for us as a band, because we still maintain a huge amount of control in terms of decision-making. We still retain all the money we make from our Patreon and merch sales and have full control over those. Our label has taken over the distribution side and is looking into potential syncing opportunities, PR and playlisting – things we previously have really struggled with but now feel optimistic about for the future.
[ANNE] Imo – As a female in the Rock music industry, do you feel that extra pressures are placed on you in terms of your image and how you look? How do you feel things are changing for women in the music business and what can be done to get more women involved and rising to the top of a traditionally male dominated industry?
[NOVUSTORY] My heart drops when this kind of topic comes up. It’s not your fault – it’s a totally reasonable question. It just hurts, ‘cause every day I wonder if the band would be further on if I was thinner… prettier… taller. And it’s so silly I know, and it conflicts with the part of me that knows that any success we have will be because of our music and our graft and not because our front person has a conventionally sexy body hahah. I wish image didn’t matter as much as it does, but it does add a lot of pressure. Photoshoots, videoshoots, interviews… when you’re fronting a band and you’re ‘in the public eye’, even on a small scale, it’s hard no to feel self-conscious and pressurized into wearing uncomfortable outfits and layers of makeup.
I do think that things are changing for the better with the body positivity movement and that’s amazing. I am currently working on toning up and getting in shape though because I’m sick of feeling lethargic and I totally just kept eating and eating and eating during lockdown haha. Turns out building a studio and working 14 hours days makes you crave excessive amount of chocolate. Who knew?!
[ANNE] You’re a big advocate of bands using TikTok to attract a younger and wider audience, as you have done very successfully yourself. What do you say to bands who are resisting using the platform, preferring to stick with Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram?
[NOVUSTORY] I think TikTok can be an incredible way of reaching a wider audience, especially a new, younger audience. The creation of Facebook accounts for younger people is rapidly diminishing whereas TikTok is only getting larger and larger amongst all age groups. The great thing about TikTok is your content is shown to people who have never heard of you before, they don’t have to be following
you to find you, and if you’re clever with the way you structure your content and you research your hashtags, you can reach a whole bunch of people with your content in a way you simply can’t anymore on Facebook or Instagram, without paying for advertising. My advice to bands would be jump on TikTok whilst it’s still unregulated in the way that other social platforms are, what harm can it do?
[ANNE] Anyone who has followed Novustory for some time will know that your drummer ‘Ducky’ has a female alter ego. Can you tell us about how the beautiful ‘Holly’ first emerged, what sort of reaction she received and how she’s blossomed since then? What challenges did Ducky face ‘coming out’?
[NOVUSTORY] Holly first emerged via a ‘Drag, Dresses & Drums’ account, where we were posting cover videos together. This then grew into Holly appearing more across Novustory social media platforms. Generally, posts with Holly in do better than other content we post on TikTok, and we think this is because the audience is possibly a bit younger and more open minded as they’ve grown up in the realm of the Internet where you’re exposed to all sorts of things from a young age that help you learn that everybody
is different and just trying to live their own life as they wish.
Facebook for instance can be a total minefield when it comes to transphobia or lack of inclusivity for anybody who doesn’t ‘fit the norm’. You only have to go to the comments of any BBC article that even remotely mentions a trans person to see that it feels like the majority of people still seem to hold
stigmas and prejudice against the trans community. I believe this is because the older, more ‘stuck in their ways’ folk frequent Facebook, whereas the younger, more open minded people are downloading the apps that are more popular with them, such as TikTok. I’m sure there’ll be an article on this somewhere, it can’t just be me who feels this way haha!
[ANNE] Do you think that Rock bands in general are doing enough to reach out to and embrace their LGBTQ+ fans? What more do you think could be done?
[NOVUSTORY] We are seeing more and more bands publicly discuss their sexualities and gender identities, which is amazing. Some people refer to it as a ‘trend’. My thoughts on this are as follows: If it IS a trend – how does this effect you?! The more people who come out and discuss gender and sexuality, the more normalized the topic of conversation becomes and thus the more comfortable people feel about coming out. The number of people struggling with their gender identity or sexuality isn’t increasing – these people have always been this way. The thing that is increasing are the number of people who feel this way who actually feel comfortable coming out now.
[ANNE] Now let’s look to the future… Where do you see yourselves as a band five years from now?
[NOVUSTORY] In five years, I see us headlining stadiums. That’s always been the goal and it’ll always be the goal. I won’t stop till we get there!
Novustory are:
Imogen – Vocals
Ben – Guitar
Blenk – Bass
Ducky – Drums
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To learn more about Novustory : Check out their Website
Follow: Facebook / Twitter / Instagram / YouTube
Stream their music: Spotify / TicTok / Bandcamp
Purchase: Amazon / Apple Music
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