Noctica
⇦ |
Blessed souls experience the greatness of NOCTICA live! |
Official Press Kit Bio
A marriage between sensational electro-pop and high-octane heavy metal. Noctica is an Australian multidisciplinary artist originating from Tamworth, Australia's country music capital. Feeling like an outsider has been a major influence in Noctica's art since day one. From performing in metal bands from a young age in a town that rejected that style of music, to recently coming out as Transgender and trying to create inclusive spaces for alternative music and people in her hometown. Noctica aims to empower others to express themselves authentically despite the judgments of others.
Despite only starting last year, NOCTICA has performed and headlined multiple sold out shows and released two singles Savior and Afterlife that in just a few short months have been streamed over half a million times collectively. All this was achieved DIY without the help of producers or labels, catapulting Noctica from another unknown local artist to one of Australia’s newest and exciting acts with a fast growing international fanbase.
For 2024 Noctica plans to release the follow up to her single 'Savior', an EP that holds a mirror up to our demons both internal and external, diving further into the heavy metal influenced electro-pop soundscape Noctica has become known for.
Notes
Noctica and her music have rocked me to the core, both musically and emotionally, and I’ve spent a lot of time self-interrogating because of it. Through the whole process she has both challenged and supported me (metaphorically of course, as I’m nothing more than a handful of YouTube comments to her personally).
So, I have all these big emotions flying around, and I am just over the moon about her music, and the best way I could categorize what I felt about Noctica was as a crush. The problem was, I don't know that much about her as a person, only the little she shared as a public figure, but what I was feeling was really big and dramatic. As someone who is generally pretty practical, it was obviously too much, so of course I had to dissect it and understand it.
I started with the most obvious: she’s a physically attractive woman. While it is true that I find her attractive, it just didn’t explain the size of the feels. I mean, Martina from Pacifica looks a lot like a young Laura San Giacomo, whom I had a crush on, and I could stare at her face for days because I think she’s so beautiful. And yet I didn’t have big feelings about her. Then I looked at other attributes that she had that I find attractive, like creativity, resourcefulness, and bravery. All things I respect in a person, but once again, they didn’t explain the intensity. So, for a period of time I was kind of stuck, and that’s part of what got me digging through my trauma.
Considering the basic concepts of the Dysphoria EP, it’s not particularly strange that her music taps into my childhood trauma. But there are also less obvious connections she’s managed to highlight too. And then there was the recent life circumstance that threw me for a loop because, as a theoretical it seemed easy enough, but when it became real, emotions I wasn’t expecting surfaced. Turns out it had connections to my trauma and Noctica as well. So, what I have is a strange ménage à trois between an artist I like, a personally challenging life circumstance, and childhood trauma. Boy, do I know how to have a good time.
I’m not going to get into the deets, but shit happened to me as a kid, and it took me a long time to get to a point where I didn’t feel broken. These days I can think and talk about it without getting all worked up, so it often feels like an old scar rather than a healing wound. But that’s the thing with CPTSD, it’s woven into you like a mycelial network; you can’t see it, but it’s there. So, even when you’ve been feeling fine for years, it can pop up and sucker punch you.
However, as I worked on the trauma and life circumstance, I began to realize that my crush had started all the way back at the beginning with the music video for Savior. But it was very small at the time, it didn’t balloon dramatically until Noctica released the last of the Dysphoria EP. That’s when I started to realize that the line between art and artist had blurred, and I was attributing to Noctica the intense emotions caused by her music. I mean, she can has little a crush as a treat; she managed to make music that fills me with joy, helped me heal a little more, and she’s cute too. However, it is a much more reasonable fan level crush, I’m glad to say.
So, for the last few months I’ve been working through these issues with Noctica as a kind of musical spirit guide. While I can feel some things getting better, it also feels like I emotionally competed in the Cooper's Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake. I know she didn’t set out to help me, but she did, and I am thankful that she was brave enough to go out and shine her light in the world. It’s not the time that heals, it’s all the things that happen between here and there that does.
Music
Tribute
Back when I started this site, I had the idea to add a shrine for each artist. The original thought was for them to be over the top, kind of ridiculous, full of 90's style gifs and such. However, as I've built this site, explored the emotional connections I have to various music, and generally have come to recognize how much I value my artists and their contribution to my life, that fell away. It just didn't seem to fit in anymore. I was going to scrap it, but I've come up with a plan to do something a bit more reserved and reverent. So instead of a shrine, I think I'm going to call it tribute. I was hoping to have Noctica's ready before the new year, but I don't think it will happen until after the new year. Having some issues getting things to be the way I want before I put it up. I also have some decisions to make about exactly how I'll present the tributes too. However, on Instagram Noctica wrote:
"The [Melbourne] show was probably the first show I felt like we achieved what I envisioned a Noctica show to be like. Not just cool lights, fancy visuals and awesome sound but a space that is non judgmental, a show where you'd find a pop artist beside a metal artist and it not be weird. The kind of gig that nothing matters beyond music and the connection we all feel from it."
While my musical tastes are not the widest, I think they are varied enough to make this whole site a kind of tribute to her in that regard.
Since Noctica's so damn special, she gets extra tribute! The truth is that the Lesser Tribute is an image I created from Noctica's art for the site, that got cut after I rearranged things. Even though it didn't take much effort, I really enjoy the way it looks, so I decided to add it here. All I did was hue shift Noctica's Afterlife cover image multiple times, and then used those altered images to create a Warhol style grid. Note that the center image in the grid is the original created by Noctica, without any changes.
The Greater Tribute is what I actually created for her, which is based on her Afterlife art. I decided to try creating a stained-glass window because if I got it right it would look super cool. Also, as an atheist, I think the emotional healing I experienced with this whole experience is similar to what religious people use their deities for.
I used Noctica's art to select my color pallet and trace out the lines I needed to create the panes for a stained-glass window. The rest of the work was all about trying to make it look like stained-glass. It's not perfect, but then I'm certainly not a Gimp superuser either. I don't know how much time I spent on it, but I'm guessing it's close to 40 hours. Most of that time was working on something only to find I needed to back track and start over for one reason or another. If I knew what I was doing, I'm sure I could have thrown it together in a fraction of that. However, I am really happy with what I was able to achieve with my limited knowledge and talent. If I had used AI to create it, I'm sure I could have gotten something a billion times more majestic looking. But stealing other people’s effort is only a tribute to capitalism.
Links
Avelina De Moray (Noctica's friend, gothic/vampire shop)