Nadja & Galena – Konstruktion LP (Adagio 830)
When you go through a lot of records by a lot of bands as we do here, you tend to miss out on the ones that put out a zillion releases, even if you get sent a bunch of them to cover. Nadja is like that. Never really had a chance to get into their music, though they were a minor bright spot in the whole collect-‘em-all/flip-‘em-hard period of music when it seemed like labels were never going to recover (let’s face it, most won’t), the dollar was weak and the Euro strong. The Wolf Eyes days, so to speak. Anyway, this is a mix of low ambient guitar chug and tiny black metal suggestions, put together into darkened, downer drone tracks. I’m sure if you dig back into the annals of Still Single you will find me complaining about music which does things the hard way, like trying to build a sustained, moving piece of dronework with the wrong tools. Any dude with a sound source or a mixer could do it better than the assemblage of Nadja with the duo Galena, but I guess people are coming at Nadja with other expectations in mind. I’m not, though, and I find the potential for superunit status (see Vaura) well squandered here, neither half of the whole giving up too much on side A. The B-side “High Sea & Turbulence” is where you start to see inklings of process bearing out positive results, as a long and toothsome opening volley of harmonic drone builds into fuzzed-out, methodical, slow-to-mid bales of squall, set to washing-machine rhythms and a gauzy, gazey stare outwards to the shore, no matter how far away it might be from water. That really saves this one, but only by a bit. It would help everyone if someone curated a “best of” out of Nadja, honestly. I know some of you are like “what’s the point” but any band can only have so many truly great moments, and it’d be nice to remember them further along, as the sweep of history brushes them away. (http://adagio830.de)
(Doug Mosurock)
