Isla Noon Teams Up with Justyn Pilbrow to Reimagine Cult Debut Album
Isla Noon spent five painstaking years building to the release of her debut album, Out of Body, in 2025. The record was embraced by a local strain of true pop believers, the kind who worship Robyn, Muna and Caroline Polachek. Critics praised a “voice like gossamer” and “a powerhouse of indie-pop songwriting” within a “synaesthetic electronic pop universe,” with one writer noting how Isla Noon (aka Shani Sauerman) “balances something really quite dance-able with emotionally difficult subject matter.”
Then something unexpected happened. Months after the album’s release, Body – its devastating, synth-grunge heart caught the ear of Justyn Pilbrow, acclaimed NZ musician and the producer behind The Neighbourhood’s Sweater Weather, one of the biggest global hits of the streaming era. He was obsessed with the track’s heavy synths rearing up out of soft, dramatic verses.
“When I first heard Body I was surprised by the chorus, specifically the contrast between the heavy synths and soft vocals,” says Pilbrow. “I hadn’t heard something like this, and I was intrigued.”
Pilbrow liked the rest of the album too, but felt it revealed the long span across which it was recorded. Sessions began pre-pandemic and wrapped in late 2024. After the pair met, they agreed to work together on a single, unified production: taking a selection of songs and reshaping them into a slimmed-down, sonically coherent body of work.
“There were parts of the album that always felt like they lived a little further out in space, so Justyn and I played with pushing the rest of the album into that sonic realm,” says Sauerman. “It was a total experiment, but we were pretty delighted to land on something that really excited us both.”
Some songs got a simple polish; others were radically reconfigured. That’s most apparent on “Her”, a guitar-driven standout from Out of Body, which becomes an urgent, pulsing IDM banger on the new record. Her (Redux) is the lead single from Out of Body (Redux) a full reimagining of Isla Noon’s debut album, released today, July 17.
“With Her, I remember being almost scared of its sadness when I first wrote it,” says Sauerman. “I wanted the production to have a lot of upbeat drive and lift, in part to balance out the darkness in the lyric. As time passed, I became more comfortable with the feelings that inspired it so when it came to making Her (Redux), Justyn and I built expansive electronic elements that let the lyric sink into a moodier, otherworldly centre. In a way it feels more vulnerable, more honest to the emotion that originally inspired the song, and more at home with the rest of the album.”
On the same date, the full Out of Body (Redux) will also land on Lume, a new album-centric platform which gives 80% revenue to artists (the highest rate in the recorded music industry), launching July 17. There it will sit alongside the original album, accompanied by a clutch of unreleased content including intimate studio videos.
The platform is built for a project like this one, letting multiple versions of songs nest together and be switched between, with access to the composition and recording process that’s unimaginable on streaming.
“I’ve always thought of Out of Body as a layered, immersive world – one I’ve pushed even further into space with Out of Body (Redux),” says Sauerman. “Lume allows me to present the whole picture on a whole new level. It’s exhilarating as an artist to offer these projects as the package they were always intended to be, with additional content for people to own. It’s the pursuit of that precious owned-box-set feeling in a digital age.”
Out of Body (Redux) brings together one of New Zealand’s most successful established producers with one of its most singular emerging artists, on a project with little precedent on a platform that is built for it. And while Out of Body (Redux) is about re-examining the recent past, the bond between Justyn and Shani endures: the pair are already planning to return to the studio to record new material together.
Her (Redux) arrives on streaming July 17, the same day Out of Body (Redux) lands on Lume. On Friday 7th August, Isla Noon presents the Out of Body (Redux) release show at Big Fan, Auckland.
Photo Credit: Tom Grut
