Register Forgot login?

© 2002-2025
Encyclopaedia Metallum

Privacy Policy

Nadja > Desire in Uneasiness > Reviews > caspian
Nadja - Desire in Uneasiness

A slightly different Nadja. - 87%

caspian, April 19th, 2008

Finally, a Nadja album that sounds a bit different! While I enjoy the usual Nadja sound- the heavily processed guitars, the huge, trance inducing waves of sound and what not- I have to admit that I was starting to get pretty freaking sick of everything Nadja stood for. Yes, the guitars sounded good but it's been the same, noisy/fucked tone for about 15 albums now, the drum programming (which was never the strong point) was getting ridiculously samey, and while the usual Nadja formula was getting executed better and better, the amount of repetition on the same formula was making AC/DC look like Ulver in comparison.

Not that this is completely reinventing the wheel. No blastbeats here, no latvian hip-hop influences. I guess this album is vaguely reminiscent of the earlier albums where everything was a good deal more chilled and droney, without much of the noise elements. Certainly the whole loose, garage-y vibe of this helps; whereas most recent Nadja releases suggest compositions written by computers dosing up on prozak, this record gives the remarkable impression of a few humans getting together with some basses*, a few amps and a (gasp!) drum kit, taking a fair bit of weed and just getting into some sort of deep, trancey vibes.

Yeah, overall the change is very nice. The drums are refreshingly organic and sound terrific; I can't really describe just how nice the addition of real drums are. The blissed out jam of 'Signs/Expressions' is a perfect example of just how much better the real drums do; the delicate cymbal work a perfect counterpart to the fuzzy, neverending drones of the basses. The general feeling is that this is a recording of a jam session- certainly 'Affective Fields', with it's mellow, almost jazzy bass lines and general chilled-outness, must've been mostly improvised, whereas the heavier songs are quite huge and groovy indeed- the drums, again, lending a nice heft to the proceedings, as Baker and Buckareff let fly with a rather nice collection of fuzzy slo mo stoner/doom riffs.

Not that it's perfect, mind. The 'deep, trancey vibes' I talked about are great, but often the jamming is taken perhaps a bit too far. 'Uneasy Desire' is a good example of this- there's not really much of a riff, just sort of aimless jamming on a riff... that goes for 16 minutes. Certainly a bit more structure would've been ideal, at least a couple of riff changes would've been nice, and while I have no problem with the "one bass does normal lines, one supplies fuzz" thing that's used in this album, perhaps a bit more variety, some sort of twin bass action would've been nice, but we don't really get any of that.

Still, overall I'm pretty satisfied with this record. It's a nice change and I can definitely imagine that it was a lot of fun to record, as the loose vibes come through quite heavily. Certainly not a typical Nadja record; newcomers should head to the Touched Remake or Bodycage first. However, for those who have maybe gotten a bit sick of the same old from these guys, this is something worth picking up, as it's quite enjoyable and relatively different.

*pretty sure there's two basses on this record instead of the usual bass/guitar setup. I may be wrong, though.