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BAKER, AIDAN - Already Drowning

Format: CD Label & Cat.Number: Gizeh Records GZH43 Release Year: 2013 Note: songs inspired by myths & folktales about female water spirits, feat. vocals of CLARA ENGEL, JESSICA BAILIFF, CARLA BOZULICH, LIZ HYSEN (PICASTRO), etc.. a very special BAKER-work, moving further into new directions.. Price (incl. 19% VAT): €17.50 Warning: Currently we do not have this album in stock! More Info "Already Drowning, a song-cycle inspired by various myths & folktales about female water spirits, marks something of a departure for Aidan Baker. While still retaining his trademark sense of ambience & texture, the tracks on this album are much more structured & song-oriented, embracing a minimalist post-rock, slowcore style & featuring a different guest vocalist on each track. Aidan Baker is a multi-instrumentalist, classically trained in flute, although his primary instrument is the guitar. Using various electronic effects combined with prepared &/or alternate performance methods, Baker creates music which generally falls within the ambient/experimental genres, but draws on influences from shoegaze & post-rock, contemporary classical & jazz. Over the course of the last decade, Baker has released numerous album, under his own name, with his duo Nadja, & with various other group projects, on such labels as Alien8 Recordings, Important Records, Broken Spine Productions, & Robotic Empire. He is also the author of several books of poetry. Baker has toured extensively around the world, appearing at such international festivals as FIMAV, SXSW, Unsound, & Pop Montreal. Baker, originally from Toronto, Canada, currently lives in Berlin, Germany." [label info] www.gizehrecords.com "Some people use many names to do many different kinds of music. Aidan Baker mostly uses his own name when it comes to his 'solo' music. I put that in parentheses, because this new one is certainly not 'solo'. Here he has a 'song cycle' of seven songs inspired by myths and folktales about female water spirits, all sung by female singers and there is help on various instruments by leah Buckareff (accordion), Laura C. Bates (violin), Nick Storring (cello), Carl Pace (trumpet) and Laurie Rodie (alto & soprano saxophones). Baker himself plays guitars, bass, flute, drums, trombone, piano, drum machine and field recordings. So, as you can imagine, this is pretty much, an album of songs, with vocals, but then in the 'Aidan Baker' way. It connects both his solo work (his 'real' solo work of ambient moods, that is) and the more heavy textured rock music of Nadja. This is all quite psychedelic stuff. Lyrics are not always to be recognized, such as in 'Melusine', but more add to the rich texture of the music. And textured this is! With reversed vocals, lots of guitar parts, spacey drums and all sorts of late 60s studio techniques to keep this psychedelic. But a piece like 'Mein Zwilling, Mein Verlorener' is on the other hand deceivingly simple, with just repeated guitar patterns, accordion, vocals and a set of drums that remind me of John Densmore's more jazzy parts in The Doors. The organ of that band is the only thing that's missing, I should think. If you are a true Baker fan for all his works inside ambient music, then you may very surprised by this, but hopefully also pleased when you hear this. I certainly was both surprised and pleased. Pleased a lot actually. While some of Nadja's work is too monolithic for me, some of his ambient work truly pleases me, but there is a lot of it, here's something entirely different, merging all of this together is some seven great songs." [FdW/Vital Weekly]