CANMORE – From local musician Kasey Nolan comes his first album titled No Words Needed, featuring an all-instrumental selection of his original music.
For Nolan, telling music doesn’t always need lyrics to tell a story – ergo the album's title No Words Needed.
“It’s melodic and complex enough that I feel like lyrics can actually take away from it in a sense,” Nolan said.
Officially released on Sept. 6, No Words Needed is played through a technique called fingerstyle, where rather than strumming, musicians pluck the strings. Generally, fingerstyle is an instrumental genre that is often composed without lyrics.
Despite the absence of lyrics, each song is built around a certain concept or idea conveyed simply through the strum of Nolan’s guitar. Every song on the album builds on one another, translating into the themes of humanity and the unknown.
“The concept is humanity and the unknown because some of the songs have a more cosmic and spacey feel and other ones have a more organic and earthy feel, but they’re all meant to flow together,” Nolan said.
Whenever Nolan writes music, he pictures an image in his head and composes a song based on that particular concept.
“A lot of people think – how can you think of a song title that has no lyrics and it’s like you just think about what you see from it. You have to sort of let your mind feel the music as well as your ears,” Nolan said.
Throughout his shows, Nolan dissects the idea behind each one of his songs – describing to listeners what exactly was going on in his mind while in the midst of his creative process. Although Nolan’s music seems abstract, he manages to translate his ideas with every note.
“People usually come up to me and say, ‘I can actually hear the concept that you described when you were playing it,’ ” Nolan said.
His style takes influence from all different kinds of music, though it might be a surprise for some to hear that he draws most of his inspiration from metal music.
“On the sonic level, my music that I perform especially on this album is pretty much the furthest thing away from [metal], but the influence and the feeling is still there for those who understand it,” he said.
For Nolan, No Words Needed is an expression of himself as a musician.
“Some people will get it and some people won’t because some people get me and some people don’t get me, just as a person in general. It’s sort of reflects that. Music should be from the heart and that’s what I do with mine,” Nolan added
On Sunday (Sept. 22) , Nolan will host an album release show at Good Earth Coffeehouse in Banff starting at 4 p.m. featuring local artists such as Andrew Philpott, John Michaels, Liam Cowan from Banff and Calgary artists, Teran Wyer, Curtis Beardy and Rian Mercy.
No Words Needed is available online where people can purchase the digital album or stream for free at kaseynolan.bandcamp.com.
