The first guitar to knock me for six was Funkadelic’s 10-minute, LSD-induced, mind-melting masterpiece ‘Maggot Brain.ʼ I heard it in my friendʼs basement when I was 14 years old, kissing a skateboarder crush at a Halloween party. The kiss wasn’t memorable but the guitar blasted me to another plane and blew my mind. Fast forward to the top of 2020, and, amid the global pandemic, I came across a clip posted by visual artist Nadia Lee Cohen of a moustachioed guitarist with inkblack curls, snakeskin and flanked by stacks of Marshall amps, called Stolen Nova. He was playing his own rendition of ‘Maggot Brainʼ, and it stopped me in my tracks and sent shivers down my spine like the first time I heard that record. I knew I had to reach out to him.
Since then, we’ve stayed in contact through the metaverse off the back of a mutual appreciation for funk, metal, hip-hop, cowboy culture, London, and even my hometown, Calgary, Canada, where he’d played gigs. He’s since appeared across California on a headline tour, recently shared a stage with Sky Ferriera, and had his music synced by Marvel in their series ‘She Hulkʼ while still finding time to lay
