Nadja

Desire in Uneasiness

Crucial Blast 2008

A rising wave of fuzz causes my speakers to shiver as the first notes of Disambiguation from Canada's industrial trance duo, Nadja, escape their electronic confines.  Nadja's use of booming thunderous drum beats and throbbing bass lines brings to mind the early works of industrial metal legends, Godflesh though not to the same degree of harshness.  Affective Fields has a smooth and jazzy undercurrent on the bass guitar while minimalism reigns on the repetitive drums.  Dwelling in calmer and subtler recesses of the mind, Affective Fields broods with soothing keyboard humming and muted drums.  Perhaps the most Godflesh inspired work is Uneasy Desire where I keep expecting to hear Justine Broadrick's haunting vocals crest over the top of the double thud of the snare drum and rumbling bass guitar.  But this expectation is never fulfilled since Nadja is a completely instrumental machination.  The fuzzed out noise of the final track, Deterritorialization, paints a harsh dreamscape over a beat that is both tribal and martial at the same time.  Over the course of its 18 minute length its unchanging face lulls the listener into a head nodding coma.  The huge amounts of minimalism and repetitive drum work makes Desire in Uneasiness a very trance inducing album.  Indicative of both Nightmarish soundscapes and Urban decay, the latest recording of Nadja buries itself within and completely infests the listener's subconscious in a manner which is unsettling.   With Nadja I find that I am assailed by walls of noise and become lost in deep wells of emptiness.  Desire in Uneasiness is an album that I can't easily purge from my psyche.