Nadja is the heavy guitar-driven project between Aidan Baker and Leah Buckarell. Listening to the overloaded intensity and slow, but forceful grit is like trying to stand firm while being deluged with gigantic buckets of shockingly cold water.
Bodycage is their second release, originally sold as a CD-R which unsurprisingly quickly sold out. This version on Profound Lore presents the original in its entirety plus two bonus (unlisted) pieces. This isn't improvised noise or 20 minutes of drone, these are actual songs which just happen to open, build, and decay over long periods of time. At its prettiest, Nadja's music is creepy enough to be a B-side from an '80s group that was just uneasy enough to get cut from the LP and at its ugliest, the duo's music unfolds like the score for a bloody horror film. Likewise, Bodycage plays out like a story.
The curtain rises at the end of the story, like one of those mysteries that opens with the end and then works backwards to find out how everybody died or something. "Clinodactyl" begins the album with the buzzing system hum of instruments plugged in. While it doesn't seem long until the drums begin and melody makes itself known, it's actually been nearly 10 minutes of fuzz and distortion. Time passes remarkably quickly, which is probably why their songs stretch the lengths they do, and by the time the song is in full swing—around the 12 minute mark—voices echo while Baker and Buckarell play a patient and gorgeous melody off each other. It ends abruptly and some jagged guitar riffs make an almost seamless segue into "Autosomal," which is almost like part two of the epic begun with "Clinodactyl." This song is a lot more violent and meanacing, with what seems more like male vocals as opposed to what could have been female vocals from the first song. The vocals are so distorted, distraught, and buried that it's almost impossible to tell. It builds and decays and there is truly a break before the final part (of the original album).
"Ossification," the other +20 minute piece on the album is a return to the formula from the beginning: open quiet, let it build about 10 minutes, add drums and begin melodic development. This one is more for the dronesters than the tunemasters like myself. While I like it, the absence of a well-defined driving melody simply doesn't take me to the levels during the climax of "Clinodactyl." The music essentially stops and the effects play each other out until they decay into silence.
The two bonus cuts are okay but do sound like "add-ons" to the concept of the rest of the album. The first is a rather noodly quiet bit of system noise and effects for about six and a half minutes before 90 seconds of silence, it does very little for me. The second is another +10 minute piece with a long opening and a crashing drums and driving melody, similar to the first and third songs on Bodycage, but a lot brighter sounding. I think I actually prefer this song over "Ossification," but when you're dealing with a reissue, I'm more satisfied to hear the original in its original form so I wouldn't have recommended taking "Ossification" out.
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