Album Details

• Artist: Nadja
• Album: Desire In Uneasiness
• Label: Crucial Blast
• Year of Release: 2008
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: patchen on 2008-06-22

Nadja's promo material describes the band as "dreamsludge," and damn I wish I had coined the phrase. Aside from being a way cool moniker, the term also does perfectly describe this Canadian duo. "Desire in Uneasiness" is their first record of new material in awhile, the last few years having seen a bunch of reissues. Here we have five tracks that slowly build to more slowness, but with deeper and increasingly more poetic colors. What does the trick on most of the songs to push them over to the sublime, especially on "Affective Fields" and "Sign-Expressions," is the fact that both Aidan Baker and Leah Buckarerff play bass, in addition to all the other instruments. Those oldsters who remember the Watt/Kira bass duo Dos already know the devastating and intensely deep rhythms that can come from the instrument being doubled.

Here the depth of tone and the space to let notes echo in silence and build to a flurry of sludgy swirls is hypnotic and meditative. Meditation in the RAW. Nadja have quietly been making some of the most compelling music of the decade and "Desire in Uneasiness" is an advance for them.

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