A small room with pink walls and purple tulips. Or rather a fluffy cocoon. In a few images as taken from a padded dream, softness invades the eye. However, it is the ear that the wave of tenderness bewitches. On a discreet carpet of dry guitar arpeggios, angelic vocalizations escape from the woman in azure blue tulle, nestled on the bed. Words are often formed in English, sometimes in French, sometimes in Spanish. But emotion is universal.
In an acoustic cover of his loving lullaby open arms, the singer November Ultra welcomes the listener with open arms into this universe as intimate as it is universal: her bedroom. At heart from this handful of square meters, the 30-year-old from Boulogne-Billancourt draws from it all the strata of this art which is so dear to her.
“I have always sung as I breathe”she told the Unbreakable in April, for the release of his first album (Bedroom Walls). “I think it’s the music that tamed me, or at least it helps me to tame myself.” Thus, his room mutates according to his creative process. From a studio where she juggles between instruments and software, the room can turn into a refuge for the eternally shy. To describe his music, which mixes pop, R&B, folk and musicals, two words come together: “Bedroom pop”. And this August 27, this dreamlike music should allow Rock en Seine festival-goers to coexist for a few moments with the singer’s melodious feelings.
This immutable collocation with music, Nova (his nickname) moved there from his earliest childhood. The first keys are given to him by Papi Ramon, his Spanish maternal grandfather. It all starts with The Zarzamora, a copla from his country (folk music). The memory is hazy, but Nova remembers singing it for her great-grandmother, when she could “barely speak”. “I remember realizing that they felt a certain emotion, she remembered for the site We All Want Someone To Shout For in July […] I knew my grandfather was proud and I loved that.” Incidentally, the latter also passed on his love for the musicals of the 60s. Since then, it has been impossible to live separated from notes and melodies.
Eleven years at the classical conservatory, seven as a music blogger in her free time… Nova swims in music whenever she has a moment. She marvels hearing Jeff Buckley, The Strokes, Lorde… And the alternative and adventurous R&B of the mixtape Nostalgia Ultra by Frank Ocean will inspire his stage name. But the deep end must wait. “My mother made a pact with me and told me that I would be able to make music fully the day I graduate”explained the workers’ daughter to the Inrocks. It is therefore with a master 2 in audiovisual translation (specialty subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing) that she plunges into the adventure of Agua Roja, her Parisian pop-rock trio from 2015 to 2018. Then in the musical support of other accomplished artists like Kungs, Jaden Smith, Barbara Pravi…
“Music has always been a soothing bubble for me”, she described to We All Want Someone To Shout For. A melodious diary in her introverted and tormented teenage bedroom, which she wrote in English so that her mother would not understand and hear her. “I was ashamed of myself, I realized that I was fat and that suddenly I had to hideshe confided to the site La Face B in early 2021. But I also had an incredible desire and need to sing.” On the eve of its 31st birthday, France is preparing to be put under sanitary bell for the second time. So November Ultra invites everyone into its bubble. His first lullaby Soft and tender comes out on November 6, 2020. And it becomes a refuge for all its listeners.
Since then, the vast majority of songs from his first album (Bedroom Walls) were born in this chamber. On the walls, postcards and words from his friends. This piece, “this is the last place where you can not wear a maskshe told France Inter in April. Lying in the bedroom is lying to yourself.” Love, sadness, resignation, nostalgia… In his lair, no more shyness for November Ultra, just a tidal wave of feelings put into song.
Even the “stage” box no longer frightens him, much to his mother’s surprise. “Every time she sees me on stage: ‘She can’t go buy a wand, and she goes on stage and she jokes with people’laughed the singer on France Inter. But I think it’s such a place where I feel good, and a connection with each other that’s so beautiful.” An emotional connection which, without a doubt, will carry Rock en Seine this August 27th.
November Ultra is in concert Saturday August 27 on the Bosquet de Rock en Seine stage, at the Domaine national de Saint-Cloud, with a selection of (re)broadcasts of concerts on the france.tv platform with Culturebox at this address.