Under the Jaguar Sun

I like Nadja. I own most of their albums, including a few that are wretchedly hard to find. That being said, this newer one from Aidan needs some serious defecating on, as it's pretty damn bad.

Most readers will be at least vaguely familiar with stuff like Neurosis's Times of Grace/Grace CD- basically one's a sludgey sort of album, one's an ambient album; they both work fine on their own (particularly the former; it's surprising you could fit anything more onto that swirling maelstrom of massive riffs) but if you happen to have two cd players (or in all likelyhood, winamp and itunes) you can sync them for a "fuller experience", or at least something very noisy and layered. It's been done a few other times; Rosetta on their debut was a particularly successful one, and I think Flaming Lips? Probably a few prog bands, too. It's not a completely new concept, anyway.

It seems Nadja wanted to get in on the act too. Those familiar with Nadja's work would realise that this would be somewhat difficult, considering how most of their music is stuffed full of layers as is. Clearly Aidan and Leah knew this as well- I can only imagine the conversation.

"This dual cd thing is really hard to do. The music sounds really uninspired, and I have no idea what else to add to the other CD."

"Why don't we just take half the layers off that CD and put it on another one?"

"But that'd sound like rubbish.. who the hell would buy that?"

"Caspian would."

And so Jaguar Sun was born. Ok, when you do go to all the effort of syncing it some parts sound sort of alright- the opening track is a pretty cool and moody beast, a low, ominous clean guitar giving the whole thing a bit of a Mogwai feel (although it goes nowhere), and the closing epic that's Earthquake is a genuinely good Nadja song- the slow and fuzzy riffs, the general huge blissed out feel- and when you sync it with it's companion Nahui-Ollin, well, it works quite well indeed. Nothing compared to past classics like Memory Leak or Stays Demons, but very solid, sure.

This record is still annoying as all hell, though, and as an experiment can be quite simply dismissed as a massive failure. For one thing, not a single one of the ambient tracks work well on their own- they're all clearly meant to accompany something, and on their own are insufferably boring; various tones coming and going without rhyme or reason. You could maybe call it "hypnotic" or relaxing, perhaps, if the general sounds weren't so aggravating- "Ocelotonatiuh" is one of the most atonal, unmelodic and flat out annoying ambient track I have. Likewise, most of the more "normal" tracks are really freakin' boring, stripped down and uninspired rhythm tracks with that trademark 'crappy nadja drum sound (tm)'. No good riffs or big builds to inspired wall-of-sound freakouts, just really lacking, plodding guitars that leave much to be desired. "Fiery Rain" has a very cool name and all but it's pointless, meandering and possibly the worst Nadja song ever- a big call; considering the occaisonal stinker Aidan's done (many of which can be found on this album).

The music's pretty bad but I could find it in myself to be charitable if it was all put together as a single album. As it stands though the whole "play these two together" concept really drags this down and makes the whole thing an exercise in masochism and teary frustration. Getting the syncs perfectly in time is freakin' hard and really damn irritating, and seeing as the two cds have no reason to be seperated in the first place it's even more annoying. This would probably get a 35% or so if it was one CD. But it's two cds, with a heap of worthless material (listening to the cds back to back is a truly painful experience), so I'm docking 20% off it. The worst Nadja release ever, by a really long way.