Woodgate, NY – 10th Anniversary Edition

Woodgate, a small settlement in Upstate New York, was the birthplace of Novo Amor, and a lot of my music still evokes the memories and feelings I carry for that time of my life. I’ve been looking back at the ten years since the original release of my 'Woodgate, NY’ EP, thinking about how much my life has changed, and I wanted to do something to commemorate the significance of the first Novo Amor release.

I asked my friend David Grubb - a violinist - to reimagine the songs on strings. David has been an integral part of the sound of Novo Amor over the last couple of albums, playing on over a dozen of my recordings and touring most of the world with me, so being able to give him the space to reimagine these songs feels very special. 

“I was honoured when Ali asked me to adapt 'Woodgate' for strings to celebrate the EP’s anniversary. I wanted to pay homage to the original recordings, preserving their familiarity while bringing in fresh elements to keep them engaging, especially without the vocals.

I began by focusing on a particular aspect of each song, experimenting until I found something that felt like a new foundation. From there, I built around it, blending in key motifs from the originals and adding subtle ear-catching details of my own. Violin and viola parts were performed by myself, and cello was performed by Kirsten Miller. Once the arrangements were complete, I handed the stems back to Ali to work his magic.”

The artwork is a recent still image taken from Super 8 footage of a building on a roadside in Woodgate. The image represents change over the last ten years, how a place or an idea was once thriving, but is now left in the past, or as the sign says “closed for season”, suggesting that maybe it’s for good.