Issue 2025-069
Nova Cascade — Box Man
Béla Alabástrom
Never pandering to convention, Nova Cascade's fifth and final album opens with The Choice, a sublime and immersive ambient instrumental epic of subtly shifting moods. Like a sunrise on a winter's day, tentative rays barely alleviating the chill as breath condenses in the morning air, frost delicately encasing every blade of grass, colours muted, a scattering of red berries glowing bright in the hedgerow, blissful solitude, the ghostly veil of lingering ground mist dispersing almost imperceptibly.
The violin soars above the bass, with a slight darkening of tone, pausing for a moment in a benign shudder underpinned by the piano, suffused with the melancholy of impermanence. As the drum machine summons us back to the immediacy of the present, it gradually picks up pace, propelled by the bass, gliding above the landscape like a hawk in search of prey while all life appears dormant. Stilling once again to absorb the calmness, a bed of autumn leaves, each vein traced out by rime, before resuming forward motion in a dreamlike state, surveying mountain peaks as they protrude above undulating layers of cloud.
A brooding and more urgent passage follows, as if descending into thick, enveloping fog obscuring our view, yet we emerge. A steady drumbeat prefaces keys flowing downward like a stream cascading over moss-clad rocks, the guitar reflective and subdued, exuding the warm liminality between sleeping and waking, keys soft and vulnerable as thistledown. Drums combine with guitar, bass and synth to provide momentum, devoid of unseemly haste, subsiding again to float unencumbered, the alternating passages like waves lapping on the shore.
Synths and bass swirl, punctuated by a muted female voice, their interplay with the drum machine lending an electropop sheen, the dual guitars enhancing the more assertively dynamic feel, culminating in an intoxicating eddy of synths and piano. The synths predominate in the overtly electronic section which ensues, a male voice repeatedly exhorts us to 'fight back', and the saxophone transports us to the vibrant bustle of a city, roads pulsing with endless impatient traffic.
The howl of a wolf abruptly tears us away from the dazzling lights and distractions, to the moon-bathed wilderness, with a Middle Eastern tinge. A more tranquil, sparser section follows, reminiscent of the score of Blade Runner in atmosphere, wistful with rippling keys and guitar. The understated penultimate passage is both pensive and hopeful, successive patterns of sunlight passing over the distant slopes. It ends with a sense of release, the joyous bounding of a stag across the hillside, pure untamed energy, ascending with the ethereal chorus to dissolve into all-encompassing finality.
The profusion of detail is what sets The Choice apart, the discreet shimmer of the chime tree, the world captured in a single droplet. There are no extraneous notes. It never asserts itself brazenly or rudely accosts you to demand your attention without lapsing into bland hollowness. Prog minus the much-maligned bombast and theatricality, simultaneously detached yet steeped in emotion, a cobweb's deceptive thread, its gossamer lightness belying its strength. An amalgam of textures and styles forming a captivating cohesive whole, each movement blending into the next. It serves as the musical expression of a profound realisation: truth is never found in the extremes.
In complete contrast, Sentry displays the cinematic qualities of Nova Cascade's music to full and devastating effect. Machine gun fire, shell impacts, aircraft providing cover overhead, we are plunged into the thick of battle, the excruciatingly slow progress over the beach under relentless enemy fire. The whizz of passing bullets stands in sharp juxtaposition to the guitar and keys which brim with compassion and sadness. The sounds of conflict gradually fade as the camera pans away from the horror and the gore to the bedroom of a veteran whose dreams are still haunted by the trauma of what he witnessed a lifetime ago.
The invisible scars borne by a generation who internalised their experiences, concealing them like a shameful secret from their loved ones, memories forever extinguished with their passing. Dave Hilborne's deliberately tentative, almost whispered vocals perfectly convey the abiding anguish, the unadorned matter-of-factness of the lyrics possess a stark potency and authenticity, more Wilfred Owen than Rupert Brooke. The trembling hands of an old man endeavouring not to spill his cocoa (that most innocuous and comforting of beverages), the screams of his wounded comrades reverberating in his mind, as we are ineluctably drawn back with him to the bloody shores.
As an undergraduate in Edinburgh in the early 1980s, grant-dependent with no access to TV, an occasional trip to the cinema (student card at the ready to benefit from the discount) was a luxury. I would walk back to the room I rented in a bay-windowed Marchmont flat, gaze resolutely pavement-fixed in an effort to go unnoticed. The route would often take me past some of the city's characters, an integral part of the streetscape. One of whom was an incongruously portly down-and-out (to employ the language of the time).
In the callous arrogance of our youth, we referred to him as "The Corpse" after his uncanny ability to sleep in shop doorways in amidst the throng of shoppers on Princes Street. Stretched out on a couple of sheets of cardboard, empty bottles of spirits arranged around him like guardians, swathed in layer after layer of cast-off jumpers beneath his grubby raincoat, he symbolised the misery visited upon Scotland by Thatcherism (to which I was viscerally opposed). He shuffled along the rain-glossed asphalt or rocked as he clutched the blankets he had procured, eyes staring into the distance, muttering incoherently while waiting for coins to be deposited in his paper cup. I know nothing of his back-story, the cause of his misfortune, he was a permanent fixture until suddenly absent. How much harder must it be now in this era of compassion fatigue and the cashless economy, passers-by avoiding eye contact at all costs to absolve themselves of discomfiting human connection, terrfied by the knowledge that they are but a few missed mortgage payments away from sharing his fate, as the lyrics of the album's title track perceptively state:
Two worlds collide here The life I lead Is the one you fear
Swelling with the imposing sonorousness of a church organ, the keys evoke the cold and hushed interior of a vaulted cathedral, angels hewn from stone looking down with indifference at the hard pews occupied by those seeking temporary refuge. The focus narrows as the keys assume a lighter tone, intertwining with the warmth of the bass, Dave's translucent vocals again characterised by quiet restraint and dignity. The protagonist's horizons extending no further than his outstretched hand, to borrow from Orwell, his future annihilated by destitution:
The contents of a box for comfort The stench of wine on his breath No noble or sympathetic company Perhaps he reasons, I'd be better off dead?
His emaciated features glimpsed briefly in the half-light, numbed into passivity, no longer perceived as an individual, but as a nuisance or a threat, drained of the will to protest, the music reflects his plight with subtlety and emotional acuity. Neither outrage, nor the seething and self-righteous indignation of placard-wielding demonstrators but a mournful and sombre placidity, inviting us not to look away.
Box Man is a meticulously crafted work of extraordinary beauty and poignancy, a masterpiece of gently unassuming prog, whose serene and introspective qualities merely render its impact all the more powerful. A fitting legacy for a prodigiously gifted, self-effacing and deeply caring soul whose creativity, vision and integrity will shine forever bright.
Interview with Dave Hilborne and Colin Powell of Nova Cascade
In a strangely apt parallel, just as Nova Cascade came into being in a gaming chat room, it was in the similar setting of a Progzilla chat room that I met Dave Hilborne. I managed to purchase the last available physical copy of the Box Man CD, having tuned in specifically to hear it played. We discussed the possibility of an interview to help spread the word about the album. Little did I suspect that our Zoom call would be the second last interview he gave.
I cannot overstate how privileged I feel to have made Dave's acquaintance, however fleetingly. His was a truly beautiful soul, his untimely loss keenly and sincerely felt.
Béla Alabástrom
David and Colin, thank you both so much for talking to DPRP. As a band, you met in rather an unusual way. Could you tell us about that?
Dave Hilborne (DH): I'll give you the short version. Nova Cascade formed in 2017. There were three of us, we were all hanging out in a gaming chat room.
And in the background, I could hear instruments being played, which obviously sets my antenna tingling. So with talking to the other two guys that were playing instruments in the background, someone had the bright idea, I can't remember exactly who it was, it might have been myself, it might have been Dave Fick. We just decided that we would get off that particular stream and hook up in another chat room somewhere and try and think about jamming, which is what we did.
And a combination of that was that we released our first track on May the 11th, 2017. And the rest is history.
For any readers who might not be familiar with Nova Cascade, could you tell us a little bit more about the history of the band and the various people who have been in the band?
DH: Sure. Yes, at its core, consistently across every album, there have only been two consistent people that have played on every album.
And that is myself and Dave Fick on bass guitar. Over those albums, we've been blessed, that's the word I use, with a variety of exquisite musicians, that's the only way I could describe them, is exquisite musicians that have either heard about us and have reached out to us to work with us, or I've reached out to them in asking them to work with us. Now, obviously, the perfect example of that, to bring Colin into this conversation, would be that when Eric Bouillette sadly passed away, I found myself having to look for a guitarist and a violinist.
Eric is not an easy musician to replace. So I then reached out to Colin and said, Colin, would you be interested? Because I saw Colin possessed the necessary technical abilities and the ear that I was looking for to bring something to Nova Cascade, which was sadly missing when Eric passed away.
Obviously, across the other five albums, there have been other musicians. We've had David Anania, for example, contributed to “A Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows”. He also contributed to the debut album, Above All Else.
David is one of the senior drum demonstrators for Gretsch drums. So he's a very accomplished drummer and musician in his own right. Having someone of that pedigree contribute to the albums, again, was fantastic. We had Heather Leslie on violin, who contributed to the debut album. And then, of course, later on, that violin role was taken with Eric.
And then when Eric passed away, I searched through approximately 60 different violinists, looking for someone that I thought could replicate Eric's style. Eric had a very particular tone, a very particular style. So I was very, very picky in that role, but I was blessed to come across Nino Chikviladze.
Colin, when did you become involved in the band?
Colin Powell (CP): During the recording of The Navigator, which was fairly soon after Eric passed. And out of the blue, I got a message off Dave asking if I would like to join and help out with the recording of that. So I jumped at the chance because I just love collaborating with different people.
I do solo work, but I also collaborate with lots of people via the internet in all different countries. So I'm quite used to working remotely, which is another good thing, working with Dave. I'm used to actually not meeting people that I'm working with.
So you're basically scattered all over the UK, is that right?
DH: Well, it goes far beyond the UK, Béla. We have myself in the UK, obviously Colin. What part of the country are you in, Colin, again?
CP: Manchester.
DH: Yes, so Colin's in Manchester. Charlie Bramald, of course, who you'll be familiar with, is also in Yorkshire, to be broad. Then we had, as they've previously mentioned, David Anania, who's based in the United States. Dave Fick, the bass player, he's in Pennsylvania, United States. Nino Chikviladze is probably the furthest away, I would have thought. She's in Georgia on the Russian border.
So we really are scattered far and wide. And of course, for The Navigator, I employed the services of a 16-piece choir from Chile. That all had to be navigated. See what I did there? That all had to be navigated remotely. So each album is truly a very multinational affair, if you like.
Yes, that's amazing. I had no idea about having a choir from Chile contributing to The Navigator.
DH: Well, you see, what it is, Béla, I'm sure Charlie would tell you this. Once I get an idea into my mad professor brain, it has to become a reality. So during the writing of The Navigator, I was writing a song called Sleeping Dogs.
And I don't know, I just thought, wouldn't it be fantastic if I had a huge choir intro to the song? And of course, then I've got to make it happen. But the thing to remember about Nova Cascade is we've got no money (laughs).
So how do you get a 16-piece choir and have no money? These are the challenges that great musicians like us face every single day. It's really through good communication that we manage to make these things work.
I'm just totally amazed, in a good way. So now you're just about to release a magnificent new album, if I may say so [the interview was conducted on 4 April]
DH: Thank you so much. I think Colin deserves every bit of credit for Box Man.
CP: Thank you. Yes, it's out on the 21st of April.
Am I correct in thinking that you actually wrote it in 1996?
DH: Yes, I wrote Box Man, the title track, in 1996. And then I spent the best part of eight years taking it apart and putting it back together. It's just that perfectionist in me.
And obviously, from a more personal point of view, it was my mother's favourite. So it has a lot of impact for me and for my family as well. So it was always my plan in Nova Cascade that if there was ever one thing that I was going to do without question, it was Box Man.
It was a case of when do I do it, and can I do it properly? Because the last thing we would do with Box Man, because it's so special, is to phone it in.
That was never an option.
Can you both tell us a bit about the creative process behind the album Box Man?
DH: I'll let Colin give you his perspective and then I'll try him in afterwards.
CP: The way it usually works is they will send me a track with the instrumentation that Dave's done so far. Not very often with vocals, but occasionally with vocals.
I'm normally the first person to receive the track, so there's no bass on it, no violin. And there's some indication usually of where the vocals might come in. But other than that, I'm left to my own devices.
And I just try to use my musical ear to find some nice melodies and some nice spaces in the music to introduce guitars, maybe additional keys, and just to enhance it ready for the other instruments and for the vocals.
DH: Yes, so what I do at the start of every album is I basically start with a blank piece of paper, metaphorically speaking. I have a few ideas about which songs I'd like to include.
A lot of the songs from Nova Cascade albums tend to be from my back catalogue because obviously I've been writing music for almost 40 years at this point. So I have a set idea about what songs I'm going to include. But then I also set aside a good healthy amount of time that I'm going to use to write a lot of new material as well, which is where something like The Choice comes into play.
And of course, as I gradually make my way through the making of each individual track, I then send it to the individual members. And I give them as much freedom as I possibly can. I don't want to be a hard taskmaster.
One of the great joys for me of doing this is hearing what my various collaborators will add to what I've already put down. And I think that's when the best moments of Nova Cascade happen.
Can it be described as a concept album in the traditional sense?
DH: Yes, I think so. I think if we were romping back to the good old 70s, I think this would probably be a double album for start, because you'd have The Choice occupying the first two sides. And then the remaining six tracks would be taking up the rest.
Yes, it is a concept album in a very loose sense of the term; it is about a journey. And there is a start, middle and an end. So yes, it's a very loose concept.
I read somewhere that your original idea was to explore the concept of an individual occupying two different realities. What made you decide to look at homelessness instead?
DH: Because I saw parallels between the two. I mean, I don't want to get too heavy on my high horse here. But I think one of the disparities that we see in societies when we've walked past homeless people is that it is like they're occupying a different world to us.
Well, they are, there's no doubt about it. So when I was originally thinking about a more fantastical idea of someone occupying two realities, I just thought, well, I can bring this right down to earth and actually talk about something that actually is happening all around us every day.
Yes, I think it's a great idea. Could we maybe look at the individual tracks and get your combined input on them?
You start off with a bold choice. I think you put the 28-minute epic at the beginning. I mean, most people expect it to come at the end, to build up to it.
DH: We've never been about the expected! Because this is the last ever Nova Cascade album, which I'm sure we will come on to, I wanted to leave with a statement. And I didn't want to go out on a whimper.
I didn't want to be that band that's like, they're on their 50th album and they're literally running on fumes. I wanted to go out like a steamroller. So putting The Choice together has been probably the hardest musical challenge I've ever undertaken in my life.
Bearing in mind that neither of us, in the case of me and Colin, hardly ever work with high fidelity equipment. We've got our PCs and our laptops and our iPads. So everything is, I don't want to use the word thrown together, but that's about the best description I can come up with right now.
But everything has to be moulded and put together very carefully and very organically. So editing The Choice together was a nightmare. But it works, it works.
You have to have a degree of self-criticism when you're putting something like that together, because it can very easily go off the rails. But yes, I'm absolutely delighted with it.
Colin, what's your input on The Choice?
CP: Yes, it was interesting to hear the final version because I only have heard little parts of it, not necessarily in the right order. So it was very much individual pieces of music as far as I was concerned. And it was a very pleasant revelation to hear it, how it all came together in the end.
And I was also very pleased and quite happy with the bass that I added to it as well, because bass guitar is not something I've played on a Nova Cascade album before, because that's Dave Fick's department. But Dave gave me the opportunity to do the bass on that track, which I really enjoyed doing.
Indeed, the bass throughout the album is quite amazing. But one of the things that really stood out to me listening to The Choice was the violin. I just thought that was incredible.
DH: Yes, thank you. This is going back, you know, you're hitting me in my emotional core here. I had to find someone that could pay homage to Eric.
And all those violin parts there, it's a very collaborative process between me and Nino, where we put them in; she had the natural instinct for what I was looking for. And I don't think she put a note out of place, to be honest. I think it's perfection.
Absolutely, I totally agree. Smoking Gun, I absolutely love the lyrics and the vocals in that.
The lyrics are understated, but they're full of associations. It made me think of Cardboard City near Waterloo Station. I am old enough to remember Cardboard City.
But where did the lyrics come from, as it were?
DH: Thank you. So, Smoking Gun comes from the same period as Box Man. We're going right the way back to 1996. You've got the line, “Walk the cardboard streets of an unknown town”.
We're right back in Box Man territory with cardboard streets of people sleeping in cardboard boxes, literally, making almost entire communities of cardboard, if you like. I mean, I can remember walking through the London Underground after seeing the Peter Hamill concert.
I can remember walking through the London Underground, just through what seemed to be streets full of cardboard, and things like that stay with you. You go home, and then take your first opportunity to start banging your way at the piano, before you know it, you've got something.
Another thing. I think Colin had some fun with that riff, didn't you, Colin?
CP: Yes. Quite a lot of the tracks that Dave sends are very interesting timings, and because they're not particularly written to a click track, it means that you have to play quite accurately, because I can't necessarily put a click track to help me keep in time, so it's quite challenging to come up with some of the parts.
If You Don't Succeed, tell me all about that.
DH: Okay, If You Don't Succeed. I think I might be wrong, Colin, but I think that might be the last thing that I did for this. I had another track that was called Reference Point, which I wasn't 100% happy with. Like I said, I'm super critical.
So yes, If You Don't Succeed, it's what it says on the tin. It's about perseverance. If you listen musically, each individual passage is doing something different each time.
It seems to be travelling up a ladder, then stumbling, then going back. So it's about patterns of behaviour. It's about adapting and getting better.
And Sentry was another one that struck me, it dates all the way back to the protagonist's memories of 1944.
DH: Sentry was written in the year 2000. I was working with a vocalist whose father had some experience serving in that period, around that period.
And lots of Sentry was inspired by some of those conversations that came up around then. And I dramatised it for a bit. I mean, I like the idea of those closing few lines of the echoes of the screams on the front line, the roar from the gunships on the front line.
Sometimes when I'm writing a song, I'm just thinking in terms of what seems visually arresting when I'm singing it.
Those lyrics are viscerally powerful, actually. They conjure up images in your mind of like the D-Day landings.
DH: Yes, thank you. I think being the sole song writer, you learn your craft over the years. I wasn't born a naturally gifted lyricist.
I wasn't born a naturally gifted anything. It's about learning as you go, you know, getting better. So thank you.
And now we have As It Was and Is. To me, that one seemed to be the most cinematic piece on the album.
CP: Yes, well, it's certainly very cinematic in the introduction on that one. And Nino's violin just really plays a big part in that, in the first half of it, really. My contribution on that one was somewhat more subtle underneath for most of it, but adding in the guitar at the end and adding a little bit of positivity and hope in some of the harmonies towards the end of the guitar there.
DH: Yes, I wrote As It Was and Is because what I was acutely aware of is for the first 12 minutes of the album, it's nothing but Nino, which is deliberate. I wanted to have that showcase for Nino at the start, but then I was acutely aware that it would seem that Nino would just seemingly vanish from the album. So I deliberately sat down and wrote something so that I could reintroduce her at the midpoint of the album again, to bring her and that theme back.
So that was a very deliberately calculated to move to sit and write something soft and cinematic, but with trademark Nova Cascade quirks. Those being completely mental sections where everybody scratches their head and says, what the hell is he doing now?
So that brings us on to the title track. Again, I absolutely love the lyrics in this. I love the line, “A smile chiselled in place, too dignified for the gutter, but out of place on a bench”. Amazing.
DH: Thank you so much, Béla. There's a very good reason why Box Man was my mother's favourite. I think she spotted something there in it.
To say that we were obsessed with the track would be an understatement, but I personally hold it as the best thing I've ever written. I think to me, it's just got the perfect combination of melody and lyrics, because I took a lot of time over those words.
And they are really beautiful and evocative words. Also the line, “The life I lead is the one you fear”. I think that encapsulates the experience of a homeless person and the way they get treated by passers-by avoiding eye contact.
DH: Exactly. Going back to what I said previously, there's an element of invisibility. People are either by design, deliberately being obtuse when they see a homeless person, or they're just trying to forget that they're there. But either way, it's a set of circumstances which they fear.
Exactly. Because there's a very thin line between, in inverted commas, a “normal” life, so a conventional life, and then losing everything and ending up on the streets. And I think sometimes people are afraid of the vulnerability that a homeless person symbolises.
DH: Yes, like I said, I think it's just something that people don't want to think about, that it could be there at any given point. And just to go back to the lyrics of Box Man, it's only through the cards that we are dealt, each of us, how we end up.
And I think the music is so beautiful there; it radiates empathy and compassion.
DH: Thank you. It was always a high point to perform that live. The live version used to be much longer.
I introduced a lot of cinematic elements. I used to do things with lighting and smoke, trying to make it into a performance, but it's not so easy to translate that when you're actually listening to something. But I think in the album version, I've condensed it down, and I've got the purity that was the original Box Man.
So thank you.
CP: Yes, I would just like to say, you can tell how much it means to Dave and his mother, so I feel so honoured to be able to contribute to it musically.
That brings us to The End of the Line, somewhat aptly. Again, musically, to me, it's more characterised by sadness and melancholy, and I think that the very mutedness of it gives it even greater power.
DH: Obviously, The End of the Line has got a twofold meaning. End of the line, as in the end of Nova Cascade. But also, the end of the line being, maybe an element of resignation of some things. I mean, there's a lot of emotions wrapped up in the music of Nova Cascade.
I find it hard to articulate. I know what I'm going for musically. To put that into a few succinct words is difficult.
But I'm glad that people hear things in it. And they translate that back to me. They tell me things which they can hear, and then the light bulb goes off in my head, “Oh, yes, I did manage to get that message across after all”.
The track to my mind is a journey through emotions such as elation and sadness. Ultimately, it culminates in a place somewhere between the two. A lot of Box Man deals with themes of duality.
I'm just really sad to learn that this is going to be your last album. Was there any particular reason why you decided that this would be the end of the line?
DH: The reasons are twofold, Béla. One is that 2020 was a disastrous year for me. I got COVID. I've had COVID subsequently three times since then.
It's decimated my health. That's the only word I can use. It's decimated my health.
And also, not to sound like, “Oh, woe is me!”, but Nova Cascade has become too big for one person to handle. Once the initial process of recording and everything is over, it then falls to my shoulders to distribute everything and to navigate, putting that word in again, all the publicity or the interviews. It's just become too much.
And, a third thing is I did want to finish on Box Man. And to me Box Man just feels the perfect completion point. You certainly haven't heard the end of me; I will be back in some form, but just not as Nova Cascade.
What plans do you have for the future? Would you consider collaborating again in the framework of another project?
DH: Currently I have no future plans for further projects. My focus for the time being is to promote Box Man. As with our previous release, we are donating all profits to cancer research in memory of Eric. Creativity is in my blood, so it's unlikely I will stay dormant for too long. In what form that will take I honestly have no idea.
Finally, imagine that there is a reader who is not familiar with Nova Cascade's music. If you had to choose one track which encapsulates everything you are trying to achieve as an artist, what track would that be? Why is it particularly significant to you?
DH: If I had to choose one track to highlight Nova Cascade, it would have to be The Choice because it is the epitome of everything we've been attempting these past eight years. Dramatic, emotional and stirring music, which we hope has reached people and moved them.
Thank you both so much once again for talking to DPRP!
DH: Thank you so much, Béla, take care!
CP: Thank you very much!