Perfect Worlds

Nadja & our friends from Japan Vampillia will be heading out on tour next week for some select dates in Western/Central Europe:

May 14 – Les Instants Chavires, Paris, FR *
May 15 – Magasin4, Brussels, BE *
May 16 – OCCII, Amsterdam, NL *
May 17 – DBs, Utrecht, NL *
May 18 – NK, Berlin, DE * ~
May 20 – Hafenklang, Hamburg, DE *
May 21 – Hühnermanhattan, Halle, DE *
May 22 – Pilot Klub, Prague, CZ *
May 23 – Rhiz, Vienna, AT *
May 24 – Stadtwerkstatt, Linz, AT
May 25 – W71, Weikersheim, DE
May 26 – Halle14, Karlsruhe, DE

* = w/ Attila Csihar as part of Vampillia
~ = w/ Crystal Shipsss

The tour is in support of a forthcoming re-issue of Nadja & Vampillia‘s collaborative album The Primitive World, re-mastered, re-worked and with a new track and accordingly re-titled The Perfect World. This will be out shortly on CD and limited LP from Important Records. We should also have copies of our new LP Flipper due any day now from Oaken Palace Records.

Flippin’

Nadja’s forthcoming LP Flipper is now available for pre-order from Oaken Palace Records, including a few package deals where you can get other Oaken Palace releases (which includes Caudal, of course). Oaken Palace is a charitable record label, with all proceeds going to various environmental agencies. Nadja‘s album is dedicated to whales and dolphins.

The first track from Flipper can be streamed above. This album is a much more minimal, subdued affair, with brief moments of heaviness, and features guest contributions from Angela Chan (of A-Sun Amissa, among others) and Peter Broderick on strings.

Stocking The Shelves 2

In a brief lull between tours, we’ve added a number of titles to our webshop, some new, some newly re-issued, and some back catalogue newly re-acquired:

• The Japanese re-issues of Nadja‘s Bodycage and The Bungled & The Botched from Daymare Recordings, each with a bonus disc, packaged in gatefold digipacks with re-worked original artwork.

• The CD re-issue of Nadja‘s Corrasion from Miskatonic Soundlab

• CD version of B/B/S/‘s Brick Mask (12″ and 7″ versions are still available directly from Sonic Pieces)

• Aidan‘s new solo releases Aneira from Glacial Movements, Mépris (with Jakob Thiesen on drums), and Already Drowning from Gizeh Records (we should have copies of the vinyl on the upcoming Nadja tour with Vampillia)

• restock of Aidan‘s older albums Fantasma Parastasie (with Tim Hecker)

• and lastly, Aidan‘s new cassette-only release Souvenirs Of The Eternal Present from Anthem Records (North Americans can order direct from Anthem)

Nothing From Nothing

My collaboration with Troum, recorded in 2011 live at Ghutto-M Studios in Bremen, Germany, is now out as a limited cd on the Russian label Alone At Last. The cd is packaged in a custom designed, handmade folding sleeve and includes a set of 11 full-colour postcards mixing computer generated images and photos of ink/light paintings.

I have physical copies available in the Broken Spine Webshop and it is available digitally here:

We still have copies of the Nadja/Troum collaboration from 2010 in the webshop as well.

Troum and Drone Records have been long-time friends and supporters. We have played and toured together many times, both in Europe and North America, including our very first show in our adoptive hometown of Berlin at Ausland in 2007. Drone Records was an early supporter of my music when I first started making ambient/experimental music and released my very first 7″ Same River Twice back in 2004, and Nadja‘s first (and only, so far) 10″ LP The Ruins Of Morning (both of which are long out of print now).

New Year Of Snake Listenings

Happy year of the Snake!

If anyone would like a teaser of songs from Caudal‘s forthcoming release Forever In Another World on Oaken Palace Records, here is a recording of our debut show in Berlin last month:

And if anyone would like to sample the first track from B/B/S/‘s likewise forthcoming debut Brick Mask on Miasmah Records, you can stream it here:

B/B/S/ will be heading out on a short tour at the end of the month:

01-23 @ Monarch, Berlin, DE
01-25 @ Christuskirche, Bochum, DE
01-26 @ Plane Ari Home Gigs/L’auréole, Bethencourt, FR
01-27 @ Les Ateliers Claus, Brussels, BE

And in other new project news, Adoran Aidan‘s collaborative project with Dorian Williamson (of Northumbria) will be releasing a full-length album with Consouling Sounds later this year. An unmastered excerpt of the first track from this album is streamable here:

Some of you may recognize Adoran‘s name from the Drone Compendium Series slowly making its way into the world via Beta-lactam Ring Records. I know this series has been long-delayed…but these LPs will eventually get out there! The third in the series, Mnemosyne‘s Air Grows Small Fingers, should be out soon!

And finally, here are a few older/out-of-print Aidan Baker/Nadja releases newly available on the BSP Bandcamp page as pay-what-you-want downloads:

A Statement Of Intent 1

Considering the frequency of certain issues raised or questions asked, I thought I might start posting a series of short essays to both address such concerns and/or outline some of my/our motivations behind what I/we do, if only for my personal edification and mental clarity, if not yours…

And so, here, in a series of who knows how many, is the first:

On Prolificacy

I am currently reading Every Love Story Is A Ghost Story, a biography of David Foster Wallace, one of my favourite writers and someone with whom, as I learn more about his personality and life, I feel something of an affinity (mentally, creatively, OCD-ly [see also: Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself). Wallace is credited as saying that, when trying to decide whether to devote his life's work to fiction or philosophy, that working on “fiction took 97% of his brain, philosophy only 50%.” Substituting music for philosophy, I find this also true—but while Wallace's statement may imply a negative connotation to the philosophical side of things, I do not consider the 'effortlessness' of music a bad thing. Creative writing is much more intellectually rigorous and mentally taxing for me than creating music—which doesn't mean I dislike writing. Rather, writing is something at which I must work harder, more diligently, more craftily, in order to hone it to an acceptable level of consumption by others. Music, on the other hand, comes freely and intuitively—as effortlessly as breathing—which arguably corresponds to the differences of the media: Writing is more about intellectual stimulus; Music is more about emotional stimulus.

Of course, there is emotionally resonant writing, just as there is intellectually rigorous music, but in terms of artistic expression (my own, at least—although I'm sure others feel similarly), this is how these two methods of artistic expression differ. I write to challenge my brain; I make music to challenge my heart (or soul...or the neurotheological centre of my brain...or whatever...).

So, if it's not already obvious, I'm writing this to justify my own prolificacy. Which justification, part of me feels is entirely unnecessary and unwarranted and why should I have to? while another part just wants to explain...

One of the most common criticisms of ambient/experimental music is that it is easy to do and (much like criticisms people make about abstract modern art) anyone can do it. And, to a degree, this is true. Nor do I have a problem with that. Everyone should be free to make music and music should be free to everyone (and I'm not talking about downloading here—that's a subject for another essay). Whether that music should be made available as a commodity (whether art should even be considered a commodity—yet another essay) and publicly disseminated is another question. This kind of music is easy to do and with the advances in technology over the last few decades it is easier than ever to produce and release music into the world. And that ease has certainly resulted in an over-saturation—and arguably the homogenization or devaluation of music—but, like many things that are easy to do well enough, it is difficult and requires skill/talent/creativity/whatever to make exceptional ambient/experimental music. And while this difference between passable and exceptional might not be immediately apparent to the casual listener, it does exist—there is such a difference. And that difference should be pretty obvious to anyone willing to listen carefully and treat this sound as more than just another auditory signal in our already rather noisy modern lives.

This may well smack of elitism and egoism (and possibly self-righteousness), but I have been working in this musical genre for over a decade and feel that I am capable of making more than just passable ambient music. Of course, I have no illusions that everything I produce is exceptional—but I don't, contrary to some negative opinion, release absolutely everything I record—and some musical projects I work on more diligently, rigorously, than others, depending on the nature of that specific project. And it has also taken me some several years to reach this point of confidence in my own abilities.

When I first began making ambient, drone-based (for the moniker 'drone' as a genre label is rather inaccurate) music in the mid-to-late 1990s, I was experimenting with sound. Dissatisfied with pop and rock music, I was teaching myself a new methodology of music, taking inspiration more from 'post-modern' musicians like Glenn Branca, Sonic Youth, and Caspar Brötzmann, and less from ambient pioneers like Brian Eno or Robert Fripp (whom a lot of people assume were influential to me—but I've never really listened to Fripp, Eno a little, yes, but not much) who, to my ears, are more about electronic/technological innovation/manipulation and less about re-inventing performance techniques of already existing technology (i.e. the electric guitar). This time period coincided with the rise of the internet and home recording possibilities, which allowed for the expansion of an underground music community that had previously been fairly disconnected. With it came the rise of micro cdr labels, which allowed musicians like myself, previously toiling in obscurity in their bedrooms, to release their musical experiments in sound in a relatively easy and inexpensive way and actually have other people hear them (and creating music in a vacuum is contrary to the nature of music—music demands to be shared).

At the time, when physical and/or digital distribution for underground music was not as developed, I chose to work with a plethora of micro-labels around the world in order that their respective fanbases and networks might hear my work. And I could, of course, have given the different labels the same album and flogged that single work in order to create a name for myself. But I found that idea unappealing and, given the nature of the music—exploratory, experimental—counterintuitive to what I wanted to achieve. I needed to keep recording, keep experimenting, in order to evolve and establish my own musical voice and, as such, I developed a pattern of prolificacy which has stuck until this day. Even if, now, today, I have established an artistic reputation and don't necessarily need to be as prolific as I once was (and I'm not, I don't think—I've just diversified [and, hopefully, evolved], with other projects, other goals), there is still that emotional resonance which music has for me…

In other words, while I may need to read or write to maintain my intellectual health, I need to create and listen to music to maintain my emotional health. Whether you feel compelled to keep up with my musical output is your choice, of course—but you needn’t feel compelled to hear or own everything I produce (though maybe consumerism is the last vestige of free will)—although I do like to think there is enough difference and variation between my various releases to keep things interesting—and I thank those of you who keep listening for participating in my emotional well-being (and hopefully your own, too!).

Stocking The Shelves

We’ve restocked the BSP webshop with some older titles we found in storage whilst back in Canada if any of you missed out on them:

Thaumogenesis (2×12″ w/ a remix by James Plotkin and a bonus live cd)
The Bungled & The Botched (12″)
s/t (cd – collaboration with Black Boned Angel)
12012291920 / 1414101 (12″ – collaboration with Atavist)

After many delays, Scythling, the collaborative project between Nadja and members of Bloody Panda, is finally seeing a release on Aurora Borealis. CD is available now, LP still to come (we will have copies in the webshop, once we receive them).

Also, I contributed to The First Time I Heard Joy Divsion, first in a series of ebooks edited by Scott Heim (author of Mysterious Skin and We Disappear), available now from Amazon.

And in forthcoming release news, Leah and I contributed to TQA Records‘ Aural Diptych Series which you can pre-order here and listen to below (we will have some copies available ourselves, for those of you in Europe who’d like to get it directly from us).

PS: We’re now on Twitter, should you feel so inclined to follow us…

“Jag dras in som en nattfjäril och jag flyger norrut igen…”

Happy International Workers’ Day!

In the spirit of socialism, here’s a free album to download:

Nadja is flying north next week for a Scandinavian tour with additional dates in the Baltics and Poland, ending up back in Berlin in time for Occulto Fest:

09-05-12: Alte Meierei, Kiel, DE
10-05-12: KB18, Copenhagen, DK
11-05-12: tba, Malmo, SE
12-05-12: Revolver, Oslo, NO
13-05-12: Betong, Oslo, NO (AB solo show)
15-05-12: Fyklingen, Stockholm, SE
17-05-12: Dynamo, Turku, FI
18-05-12: Von Krahl Bar, Tallinn, ES
19-05-12: Kino Balle, Liepaja, LV
20-05-12: XI20, Vlinius, LT
22-05-12: Sen Pszczoły, Warsaw, PL
23-05-12: Alchemie, Krakow, PL
26-05-12: Occulto Fest, Berlin, DE

(bonus points to anyone who can figure our what the google-translated title of this post refers to)

Documenting The Process 3

Second in the Broken Spine cd re-issue series (the first being Bodycage) is Nadja‘s 2007 album Thaumogenesis, originally released on cd by Archive and long out of print (apart from the vinyl version on Important Records).

The official release date for Thaumogenesis is April 23, 2012 but we will have copies available on our upcoming tour. The album is available digitally here, though, if you just can’t wait for a physical copy:

Documents

A brief respite from touring…but of course we’ve some upcoming shows, including these two support slots in Berlin:

06-03-2012: Aidan opening for Sharon Van Etten at the Grüner Salon
10-04-2012: Nadja opening for OM at the Berghain

Also, Nadja will also be heading out on tour with our friends Off The International Radar in a couple weeks. There might be some last minute additions to this list, but here’s what the dates are looking like at the moment:

14-03-2012: NK, Berlin, DE (w/ Portraits)
15-03-2012: Markthalle, Hamburg, DE
16-03-2012: Alhambra, Oldenburg, DE
17-03-2012: Vera, Groningen, NL
18-03-2012: Magasin4, Brussels, BE (w/ OvO)
20-03-2012: Les Instants Chavires, Paris, FR
21-03-2012: Allones, Le Mans, FR
23-03-2012: Mix’art Mryrs, Toulouse, FR
24-03-2012: L’Embobineuse, Marseilles, FR
25-03-2012: Mattatoio, Carpi, IT
28-03-2012: Klub Place, Rijeka, HR
29-03-2012: Rhiz, Vienna, AT
30-03-2012: Kafe Kult, Munich, DE
31-03-2012: Klub K4, Prague, CZ

Thisquietarmy also recently released a 3CD Tour Document from our tour last spring, which sold out nearly immediately. I have a few copies left, so if you’d like one get in touch sooner than later. Alternately, the tracks are available digitally here:

And iff you need some consolation for missing out on the above Tour Document, you can always download a performance from my last tour with A-Sun Amissa on Free Music Archive.