Novparolo is the collaborative project of Bev Stanton and Winston Psmith, a duo based in Silver Spring, Maryland that has spent years building something genuinely cinematic without a screen in sight. Their work sketches out impossible films... wind-swept vistas, dream-like worlds, nighttime city streets, ancient landscapes, distant corners of space... all conjured through keyboard, guitar, groovebox, and the kind of electronic processing that guides and structures rather than driving. There's a delicate architecture at work here.
It's chamber-synth-pop, but not the kind that announces itself. The synthesizers are gentle, futuristic, embedded in textures that feel more like accompaniment than the main event. What Stanton brings is precision on keys and groovebox; Psmith grounds it all on guitar and what he calls "black box" musicianship... the kind of experimental work that emerges from machines with blinking lights. Stanton has won over a dozen Washington Area Music Awards in the electronica category and her work has appeared on Discovery Channel, VH1, and MTV programming. Together they create something quieter, more patient, with a sense of atmosphere that accumulates rather than explodes.
The duo perform live improvisation, the scores shifting each time. They've performed at Rhizome DC, Electric Maid, Artomatic, the National Electronics Museum. There's also a growing catalog of recorded work, including Live at Artomatic, 20-21, and earlier albums like viro maŝino and Fine Tiraneco. The project moves at its own pace, less concerned with hitting marks than with what happens when synthesis meets intentional restraint.