From skating the empty swimming pools of Beverly Hills to his psych-punk solo project Stolen Nova traveling back to London. Josh Landau’s cultural humor in Domino Leaha’s analog photography
Stolen Nova, an American musician in London: A beautiful cultural encounter
As singer Josh Landau aka Stolen Nova opens his computer to join the Zoom call for his interview with Lampoon. He is seated in his family home in Los Angeles, having just returned from a three-week stay in a city he holds dear: London. During his time there, he played at a Halloween party organized by the collective Plastic Factory, experimented with a new British band, learned to cook a fry up english breakfast, had some recording session and skated the ramp of the Design museum Skateboard exhibition for which he had previously composed the score of a short film on the history of skateboarding.
Skate, skateboard, skateboarding – Josh Landau’s Californian past and his band The Shrine
Even though Landau was born and raised in California, he had always been coming to London to make music and tour with his previous band The Shrine – in which he dedicated nearly a decade serving as both guitarist and singer. After a European trip this summer, invited to attend fashion weeks, he extended his stay in the British capital for three months, postponing his return ticket as he immersed himself in the vibrant local cultural scene.
«It was the middle of the summer, I was running around town doing guitar sessions, playing with other artists, meeting people, going to parties, riding the bikes through the street», he explains before adding «I’ve always loved London, but I just kept on falling further in love with it».
There, he crashed on various friends’ couches, switching locations every two days, all the while lugging his guitar in a suitcase up and down staircases. Eventually, he stayed at a friend’s place for a month while they were away, giving him a stable home base. «Something in my gut was telling me I needed to be in London, and I stuck through it. I finally got some good offers for the next year so here’s a reward for all the time spent in London», happily concluded Landau.
The Rabies and the The Shrine: Josh Landau’s first skater punk bands
It’s near Venice Beach that Landau spent most of his teenage years; going to the skate park, and hanging out with his friends. His first musical memory comes from a skate shop party near the beach when aged ten years old. «The singer of the band grabbed me, told everybody that I was his little brother and pulled me to the front. I remember that excitement and weird buzz I had never felt before».
In high school he founded a first hardcore punk band called The Rabies which was «a skate rock, thrash, stoner punk, Black Sabbath-inspired kind of thing», as the musician explains in his own words. With one-minute-long songs, the band played in houses’ backyard parties, skateparks, or warehouses in East LA before driving around the country being booked on MySpace.
Josh Landau’s cultural humor – a skater punk band in 2008 called The Shrine
He then followed with another skater punk band in 2008 called The Shrine. «We were really deep in the skateboard community, playing at numerous Thrasher magazine parties and making music for skateboard videos, etc», explains the musician. With long hair, the image of a wolf as an emblem and screaming more than they were singing, the three-member band toured Europe as they opened for the thrash metal band Slayer.
But in 2019, Slayer announced the conclusion of their journey with a goodbye concert in LA. And with Ozzy Osbourne’s Black Sabbath with which Landau’s band had shared stages at Download and Ozzfest music festivals, having done the same two years, Landau started questioning his musical path. All these iconic bands, with aging members, bidding farewell to their musical legacies, made Landau decide to move on and go solo. Aged 27 at the time, the musician realized: «I didn’t want to end up being a fifty year old guy in my denim cutoff vest looking like a Hells Angel», he said with cultural humor.
A new beginning : Vortex a first single and a stop motion animation video clip made with Nadia Lee Cohen
He cut his hair short and as the pandemic hit, used this time to concretize what his next move would be. He first had to choose a name. It’s from the lyrics of the American rapper Slick Rick song from the 1980s that he got the name Stolen Nova. «Then he dipped into a car, a stolen Nova, Raced up the block doing 83» he sang before explaining, «for some reason, it stuck in my head. It just has a swing to it».
Having always been into graphic design and having crafted the entire identity for his punk bands over the years, he began cutting letters from magazines in a ransom-note style, drawing inspiration from Jamie Macgregor Reid, the artist behind the Sex Pistols’ record cover. «The art, the covers, the screen printing, it’s all one piece for me, the aesthetic is just as much of the band’s identity as the music. It’s just another way of expression but it’s coming from the same desire», he said.
The pandemic – Nadia Lee Cohen and Josh Landau
For the music, his first single Vortex was actually recorded two years before its release. Originally a heavy rock punk song with fast live drums, a brainstorming session with musician friends led to the idea of transforming it into a more soulful and R&B-influenced version. Starting by making the bass line, he then used an octave pedal on his guitar making it almost sound like a synthesizer from a Prince song. «This sound excited me so much because it was sharp, fresh and just different from everything I’d done. It helped me give a separation from my older projects and sort of laid the blueprint for Stolen Nova», explains the artist.
During the pandemic, Landau spent his time with his ex-girl friend the photographer and director Nadia Lee Cohen watching documentaries on the Dada and the Surrealist movement. Inspired by those aesthetics, they decided to create a first video clip for his single Vortex using the stop motion animation technique. «I was having fun doing all these animations, cutting my head off and making my eyeballs disappear. And the world was shut down so there was nothing else to do», said Landau.
They began by doing a photoshoot with a «weird warrior outfit and a cowboy hat» and took those as a starting point. Riding a horse, a spaceship or a cop car, making his mouth move as in the Monty Python movie, or putting his head on a sexy female body, the couple spent more than two hundred hours creating the music video. «I got completely obsessed. I fried one of the computers we were editing on, but it was so satisfying when it all finally came together», explains the singer.
What lies ahead for Stolen Nova: To keep on performing and an upcoming album
For as long as Landau can remember, he had always loved performing in front of people; whether it would be at school having to do a presentation for the class, or with his guitar in hand at parties. «It takes a lot to get to the situation where you’re comfortable performing. There’s so much logistics, the planning, the gear, the timing…That can be a real hassle, especially when you’re usually sorting out everything yourself. But then when you get to perform and the sound is right, it’s the best feeling».
For Stolen Nova to perform, there is no need for a stage or some special lighting. The musician particularly enjoys playing in unconventional settings where he is not anticipated. In London last week, he played at bar that was not fit for a concert and explained: «it was messy, but the energy was so high because it was so unexpected». In 2021, to promote his debut single Vortex, he boldly scaled the billboard featuring his album cover, treating onlookers to a brief electric guitar performance before being forced to descend, lacking the necessary permit to do so. «I’m chasing adrenaline. And everybody’s seen too many shows these days, it can be boring at some point so I’m just trying to do something different», said the musician.
The band Cobra Man: funky drums and basslines. Josh Landau’s cultural humor
Even if he only got to release one song this year, Stolen Nova has been playing numerous shows going on a United State tour, driving around the country supporting the band Cobra Man. «It’s been really, hard-to-finish things, especially when you’re on your own. I’ve been creative but I need somebody to put a gun to my head and ‘say, okay, finish this now’» explains Landau with his cultural humor.
More than fifty songs have been written, and under his new manager’s advice he is teaming up with producer Mike Rossi who worked on Arctic Monkeys first records, or on the English singer Jake Bugg productions. So for the next few months Laudan will soon head to the studio to prepare and record his first album. «I don’t even know where it’s going to go. But we’re going to take those trademarks : these funky drums and basslines, this octave guitar that sounds like a synthesizer guitar. And we’re going to go somewhere new» said the musician, sounding more excited than ever.
The analog photography of Domino Leaha
On the occasion of this interview with Josh Landau, Domino Leaha shot an intimate series of analog photographs in the artist’s house in California.
Italian-born photographer, Domino Leaha, has built a career as eclectic and bold as herself. Lately, she has been splitting her time between London, New York and Los Angeles. Her most recent works were conceptualized and executed in Los Angeles, where the artist has found new visual freedom.
Leaha is also exploring alternative processes to photography, including painting and layering with acrylics, cold waxing, palladium printing, and cyanotype. She has also delved into collage and live documentary photo projects. Her photographs have been featured in multiple magazines and gallery showings around the world.
Anna Prudhomme
