Nadja
- Story by Adrien Begrand
Prolific ambient drone duo can't, won't and don't stop
For the mastermind of Canada’s most formidable drone/ambient doom act, Nadja’s Aidan Baker is a surprisingly soft-spoken guy, offering laid-back yet perceptive responses on the phone that register just a notch or two above a whisper. With all the projects he and co-conspirator Leah Buckareff currently have on the go (three full-lengths and five 12-inch releases this year, all on different labels), and coming off a 2007 that saw them unveil seven more releases, you’d think he’d be coming apart at the seams; but nah, his languorous demeanor says otherwise.
Two new albums, in particular, are the main reason we’re on the phone, those being the excellent, just-released Bliss Torn From Emptiness (Profound Lore) and the forthcoming Skin Turns to Glass (The End), both of which are complete overhauls of old CD-R releases, which have long been out of print. “The main reason we’ve been doing this is that people have been asking if they can get copies of the original CD-R releases, but we thought the production values were pretty crappy,” Baker explains. “They’re all recorded on four-track, and we’ve since upgraded our studio. So rather than reissue subpar material, we decided to re-record them entirely. Skin Turns to Glass is the last of the CD-R releases that we’re re-recording. Essentially, the songs themselves are the same, but just completely redone, revamped so it’s a lot fuller, the production’s better. It’s the way we sort of envisioned it in the first place but weren’t able to do because our technology wasn’t up to snuff.”
While essentially consisting of older material, both albums further enhance the already well-defined Nadja sound, whether it’s the marathon hidden track that appends Skin Turns to Glass or the spine-tingling, Six Feet Under-sampling second track on Bliss Torn From Emptiness. The latter especially stands out, thanks to its artwork (always a Profound Lore hallmark), featuring cleverly manipulated photography by Baker and accurately reflecting the hypnotic quality of Nadja’s oeuvre. “It’s a combination of photography I did with wires and cables mixed with a couple of images I liberated from the internet, which I superimposed and digitally tweaked,” Baker reveals. “It’s sort of the idea that bliss torn from emptiness isn’t really virtual reality, but mechanically or narcotically induced… the imagery is like plugging into cables and manipulating your reality via electronics of something like that.”
All the projects Baker and Buckareff have on the go can get a bit confusing, and not just for us at Decibel. “We’ve had lots of requests to do collaborative things with people over the last little while, a few of which we’re working on right now, and that can get difficult to keep track of,” the former concedes, his gentle tone making it very difficult to believe he’s bothered at all.
