It's all been pretty uneven with Nadja the last two or so years; a few real good 'uns aside most of the time's been spent on doing bad splits with worse bands and well meaning but ultimately failed experiments. "Belles Betes" wasn't really a return to form, but it's definitely a good Nadja release. Those looking for something different from Quiet Stoner Man and and his Librarian sidekick will be disappointed, but the sound isn't yet broken so I'm not too bummed.
There's no way of telling that this is actually a CD full of Aidan Baker's solo stuff reworked, but that's hardly surprising considering Baker's solo stuff is generally Nadja with less distortion, and thus by adding more distortion it will sound like Nadja. Exactly like, really. The guitar tone is fuzzy and blown out to the point of incoherence, the drums suck but are ignored easily enough, the vocals do that really quiet droney thing - I like Aidan's vocals, but I wish he'd do something a bit different, like use more then his typical few notes. Anyway, all in all it's that really immersive noise 'n' guitars set up here that's on basically every other Nadja album. Needless to say, as it's a remake of a bunch of ambient tunes there's not really a lot of metal here, at all, but again that's not surprising if you've followed Nadja to date (by my count, there's maybe 1 inarguably metal album, 2 borderline, and a lot that only share very superficial similarities with it).
Overall, this is hardly essential but a pretty good release. Nadja cranks a lot of them out, though. It's not the Touched remake, it's not Thaumogenesis, and it's not Truth Becomes Death. Like most of the more obscure Nadja cuts this is generally a release solely for the Aidan and Broadrick slash fanfic writers, but it's not a bad release by any means. Shame there's nothing from "Sea Swells a Bit" though, as that album was siiiiick.
As if re-recording their own material wasn't enough, Nadja seize on six tracks from Nadja main man Aidan Baker's solo ambient-oriented albums "Songs of Flowers & Skin", "Green & Cold" and "Wound Culture" and subject them all to the familiar doom-rock blowtorch. After frying under those layers of guitar noise fuzz and dense drum-machine rhythms topped with Baker and Leah Buckareff's whispering voices, the six beautiful beasts not surprisingly conform very much to Nadja's droning sludge-trudge template to the extent that most tracks labour rather too lumberingly under that doom-drone regime. A few tracks retain enough of what may be their previous incarnations' character to not only survive but even add a different flavour to the Nadja style. Which surely must have been part of what Baker and Buckareff intended in making over these tracks.
Of the music on offer, "Beautiful Beast" gets bashed a lot by a pedestrian drum beat but strikes back with a prolonged passage of trilling, pulsing guitar feedback drone aided by higher-pitched licks that almost resemble hollering seagulls in the background. Echo and layered guitar effects give this piece a dreamy disorienting psychedelic feel. "Machina" is another lovely track due to a distinctive melody, cloudy guitar fuzz and Baker's chanting voice but is let down by dull mechanical percussion that grounds the melody and doesn't allow it to float where it will. Cold-toned keyboards and flute smothered in echo effects compensate by giving the track some atmosphere and depth.
My impression is "Green & Cold" should be sinister and reptilian but the treated vocals that should have been a highlight here get pounded by more of those dead-toned, thunk-a-thunk drumbeats. What should have been a snaking droning entity gets chopped up and turned into shapeless lumps of sludge. Too much of the album suffers repetitive drumming which dictates the progress and structure of the music. The last track "Wound Culture" is too long for a melodic piece that relies heavily on more dull percussion and slow noise guitar lacking a gentle touch.
Nadja passed up an opportunity to adopt the best aspects of the original ambient versions and allow those to influence their style. Parts of the album and "Wound Culture" especially could have benefitted from a softer, more clear-toned or acoustic guitar treatment. The emotion that was present on previous Nadja recordings I know is missing here and some tracks come across as self-parodying as a result. There doesn't appear to be an over-riding theme that justifies the selection of these particular six beastly beauties and which would make this album more than just a compilation of makeovers.
As a big fan of Nadja, I surprise myself sometimes given the fact that I’ve never actually listened to any of Aidan Baker’s solo material. ‘Belles Betes’, the second full-length of 2009 is a reworking of his solo material, so I was excited to see what he had to offer in contrast to Nadja, the combined effort of Aidan and Leah. Whether this was intentionally done, I do not know, but I assume so. ‘Belles Betes’ sounds remarkably like a lot of the old Nadja works, which draws out a defeatist mentality in me given the fact that there are already numerous records of this style in circulation and, unfortunately, some of the older one’s are done to a much higher standard. However, all is not lost as there seems to be a balance here between the old droning style that depicts elongated dream sequences of a spaced out nature and the newer style, which has incorporated vocals on occasions - as this does. I’ve always known that the majority of Aidan’s solo works were revolved around similar genres, ambient, experimental drone and the like, but I never expected his own material to resemble that of Nadja quite so specifically.
The inner details of this record are parallel to that of Nadja’s old works. I shouldn’t be surprised, given the fact that Aidan worked single-handedly on some of the old Nadja pieces and, of course, this gave him all the creative control he could have wanted. His solos works were bound to generate a sound even slightly similar to that of this droning Canadian legend, Nadja. Whenever his solo project is compared to Nadja, it isn’t merely because he is a creative force behind both projects, but because, seemingly, they sound alike in some respects. ‘Belles Betes’, despite not living up to my expectations, isn’t a complete disappointment. It offers some deviation from the formulaic standards of Nadja, which has drifted along the same time line for a long period, sparsely offering something that draws out new and fresh a la ‘Desire In Uneasiness’ which cleaned out the mucky distortion and gave a controlled performance that depicted the light of the moon stretched across the rivers calm waters, as opposed to the depiction that distorted style lays down as it shifts out of the light and into the darkness, allowing us to see all the horrid things that lurk in the night beneath the shining stars of hope.
Some of the songs on this piece offer an interesting combinational style of those two sounds. Take ‘Beautiful Beast’ as an example. The aptly named song moves like a beast hunting its prey at night, in the darkness of the distorted guitars, the ambiance lifts the soul of the beast above the dark and into the light which enables it to see and have an advantage over its cautious prey, shaking and worried. As the guitars build to a beautiful crescendo, the percussion offers a hammer blow to the fragile prey that exists only as long as the beast is allowing it to as its soul comes down from the heavens and strikes with venom as the drum beats grow louder and louder, clasping its jaws around the neck of the frail animal who is in a deadly position. The full force of Nadja, and Aidan’s solo works, is in the imagery it creates. The music itself is repetitious - because, after all, that is what makes it droning in style - and lacks creative bite in terms of instrumentation, so it relies heavily on distorting our minds through distorted instrumentation. The imagery Nadja conjures is second to none within this field of nightmarish dreams. ‘Belles Betes’ is, most certainly, the dreamiest record that Nadja has produced in a long time, perhaps ever and is definitely enhanced by the spoken vocal melodies which chant away in the distance, allowing the instrumentation to speak for itself, as an individual of Aidan’s vocals.
The first three songs; ‘Sand Like Skin’, ‘Beautiful Beast’ and ‘Machina’ are amongst the best dreamy works that the Canadian powerhouse has created. Though his music may drift along the same lines, his diverse mind, which portrays significant imagery, like the best descriptive novel you have ever read, is a pivotal tool to the success of songs just like these. His monumental structures, enforced by distortion and heavy use of double bass, are what impresses the most. Though they’re repetitious and even remind us of days gone by, Aidan still manages to make these soundscapes sound lively and captivating. The record does become slightly tiresome towards the unimpressive end (thought this may just be me being a bit too harsh) with ‘Chainsaw’ (which really does have that sort of effect given the rumbling distortion) and ‘Green + Gold’ fail to deliver to the same grandiose heights as the aforementioned threesome. The dreamy atmospherics are still present, in fact, they’re ever present, but lack a real vocal point in terms of the directing imagery that leads the majority of Nadja works to success and beyond. ‘Belles Betes’ is a positive sign and should definitely be seen as such. With all the collaborative efforts coming up, and the cover record already released, its nice to witness a Nadja piece that resembles the good old days. A keeper.