Exposé Online banner

Exposé Online

Not just outside the box, but denying the existence of boxes.
Covering music from the fringes since 1993.

Reviews

Nadja — Under the Jaguar Sun
(Beta-lactam Ring mt175a, 2009, 2CD)

by Jon Davis, Published 2011-07-01

Under the Jaguar Sun Cover art

It took a little work to properly listen to this one. The two CDs are meant to be played simultaneously on different players, so I had to work out a way to get it going on the home stereo at the same time as on my laptop hooked to some decent speakers. Pretty much impossible to synchronize, but I think it was close enough. Awkward, but I’ve had a copy of Zaireeka for years and never managed to play all four CDs together. Let’s call the stereo (CD1) “front” and the laptop (CD2) “back.” From the front you hear a plodding, moody rock band, with lots of reverb and feedback; from the back is a wall of ambient noise that shares some of the same tone colors as the band. If you wander around the room,you get varying balance between the two. Occasionally, it evens sounds like the back has an actual echo of a guitar or something from the front,or maybe there was just an airplane flying over my house. Low in the mix, creepy voices sometimes rise up like indistinct shapes in murky water. Of course, you can also listen to them separately, giving you one set of noisy sludge and one of noisy ambience. For packaging, there is a lovely (if inconvenient) heavy fold-out cover that makes a big “+” shape with colorful panels of mixed-media art.

Filed under: New releases, Issue 39, 2009 releases

Related artist(s): Aidan Baker, Nadja

More info
http://nadja.bandcamp.com/album/under-the-jaguar-sun

 

What's new

These are the most recent changes made to artists, releases, and articles.