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.