Nadja: Exploring Synchronicity
From the project’s inception, NADJA have drawn upon a plethora of media to guide their sonic explorations. The name itself is an allusion to both André Breton’s novel and Michael Almereyda’s film, and their vast catalogue makes prodigious use of esoteric cultural references. Operating as a duo since 2003, Aidan Baker and Leah Buckareff inculcate their saturated dronescapes with diverse themes, and often ground their abstract arrangements in equally intangible concepts and ideas.
“I think it’s mutually informative,” observes Aidan. “We often take inspiration from other media. Usually it’s books, sometimes film, and often other people’s music of course. When I get into a certain thematic mindset in my reading habits, I pursue similar themes across different writers and genres and when that synchronicity comes about, I find it inspiring. It spurs me on to use those recurring themes in my music.”
Their latest full-length, Luminous Rot, is constructed around the duality of science fiction and the physical sciences: ‘first contact’ and spatial geometry; alien life and multi-dimensionality. Even crochet became an important source of inspiration. “That’s Leah‘s department; she’s the crafty one,” Aidan says admiringly. “The way Leah explains it, it’s seen as an old fashioned practice, but it’s also highly mathematical.” The Latvian mathematician Daina Taimina famously employed crochet as a means of representing hyperbolic figures, and her work continues to inspire academics and artisans alike. “When I started reading around the three body problem it brought this to mind, because there’s a lot of mathematical theory in there too,” Aidan recalls.
While drone is NADJA‘s primary musical technique, and their arrangement centres around a traditional rock setup, their playfulness in experimentation can more than accommodate their thematic purview. “We have two general modes of operation,” describes Aidan. “One is the long form, ambient and sprawling atmospheric thing and the other is more focussed, song-like and structured. We have examples of both of those styles and everything in between,” he continues, “Luminous Rot is very focused.” For their twenty-seventh full-length, NADJA have managed to marshal their blown out, maximalist sound into conventional rhythms and structures, as though they were aping their mathematical preoccupation.
The percussive element in Luminous Rot is deceptively conventional for the project, as Aidan elaborates. “The sketches started with analogue drums rather than a drum machine, which was a departure for us. It gave us a new rhythmic focus. Normally the drum machine is very strict and relatively simplistic,” he continues, “and even though the live drums which we recorded weren’t actually used in the end, the ‘human’ form of the rhythms and patterns informed the structure of the songs.” The reciprocity of the human and digital elements echoes the science-fiction which had inspired the album initially. “We kept some samples here and there, but we essentially replaced analogue drums with drum machine,” he concludes.
The result of their experimenting in convention has already garnered a broad range of interpretation, with GODFLESH, MELVINS and EARTH all acting as interpretive reference points. “I was thinking CARCASS when I was doing the demos,” muses Aidan. Our brow furrows a we struggle to hear it. Grinning, he continues. “If there’s a CARCASS-ness to it, it’s the crossover period,” now chuckling, “where they moved away from grindcore and towards the death metal style that they’re known for now. It’s not super technical, because we’re not a technical band, so it’s vague and sloppy somehow – but somewhere between Reek Of Putrefaction and Heartwork?” [“Perhaps one CARCASS track, but played over forty-minutes?” we suggest] “That might be entirely within my own head then,” he concedes with a smile. “A friend of mine here in Berlin told me it reminded him of MINISTRY’s Twitch, when they became a bit more electronic. That album has got that heavy/new wave feel to it, paired with industrial-ness, and I can definitely hear that in Luminous Rot.”
As much as Luminous Rot invites comparison, it is assuredly singular in its production, with SLINT’s David Pajo at the mixing desk. “It’s the first album we’ve had which has been mixed by someone else, and that was facilitated by Greg Anderson,” Aidan recalls. NADJA is a notoriously promiscuous project, which moves between small and independent record labels with gleeful abandon, but the circumstances surrounding Luminous Rot called for the clout of Greg Anderson’s Southern Lord.
“We haven’t worked with a major label for almost a decade, partly by choice and partly because of some unpleasant experiences, but it’s been good,” he admits. “[Greg Anderson] suggested a shortlist and we heard some short mixes from each of them, but I liked [David’s] the best. There are things in there I would never have done myself, elevating the vocal takes for instance, but that’s what makes it different.” Under David Pajo’s influence Luminous Rot aligns itself just as closely with the post-punk tradition as with the drone/ambient artworld, which makes it an ideal point-of-entry for any NADJA novices, as well as an interesting new turn in their expansive and experimental career.
Luminous Rot is out now via Southern Lord.
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