Nadja
Touched

THE REVIEW

Nadja is an unclassifiable (shoegaze doom ambient drone) side project that, since 2002, hides behind the blue eyes of Canadian multi-instrumentalist Aidan Baker, playing to drain his soul starting from the name (aidaN - Nadja).  An insatiable creature of vanity that never spills into arrogance, Nadja grows in the captivity of a studio, where, despite the inevitable collateral diathesis of familial influences (Swans, Godflesh, Jesu), it learns to measure the distances, forging unique sonorities and demanding an attention from the creator beyond human limits, materialized in a prolific production (14 Full-Lengths in six years). Narcissism that will later find an outlet also thanks to Leah Buckareff joining on bass, crucial for the inauguration of a series of live shows, mostly in America.

Touched (2002) is only the first album. Four inseparable tracks for a high potential of alienation that knows how to consume itself up to the brink of vertigo, a journey that in 43 minutes detonates its load of hypnotic riffs, feedback, and atavistic echoes of an era that knows neither time nor place, but only the sensuality of words whispered in the ear intertwining until shaping a spiral of epidermal attraction. "Your fingers stretch webs across my skin, entwine and enclose and wrap me within sticky strands of silk..." 

The imperative is to let oneself be completely immersed in this fluid, capable of overwhelming with sweetness, as well as enveloping with violence the listener, dragging and imprisoning them in a vortex unleashed in distortions loaded with unique magnetism.

Nadja is an experience that doesn’t end with a single listen; however, listening to this album again will each time be like covering with a silk drape a scar destined to remain open.