Ian here. I originally started the project in the wake of another band I was in imploding. I personally had been raised with a lot of post-punk and new wave music being played in the house, but in my teens and early 20s I got really into purely guitar-based indie and punk music. One day sitting in the car the song “Electricity” by OMD came on and rearranged my brain a bit. I was struck by how a band could make synthesizer-based music in a way that felt just as raw and urgent and unpolished as the punk-leaning things I’d become so enamored with as a teenager. It bridged my music taste at the time with what I was hearing as a child and suddenly something clicked. That’s the spark from which NoL was then born.

Cathartic, scrappy, yearning. Sonically it’s some combination of yesteryear’s punk / new wave touchstones mixed with 00’s indie.

Kraftwerk, The National, OMD, LCD Soundsystem.

It’s a song about trying to make art to get through a difficult time, but running into a bit of imposter syndrome about the thing you’re making. Creation is one of the only constructive coping mechanisms I have, but fighting off the self-doubt creeping in often becomes the final boss of the whole process.