Nadja: Canadian outfit to make noise on Leeside

THE newest release from Canadian duo Nadja is something of a departure. The music made under the moniker Jumper is a singular, near-hour-long piece of improvisation that largely does away with the band’s long-established middle ground between the harsher end of the doom-metal and noise spectra and the pensive the shoegazing subgenre, providing, instead, minimalist electronics built around almost stoic drum-machine and pock-marked with washes of feedback and noise from bassist Leah Buckareff’s instrument.

While you mightn’t expect to hear it in its entirely in a live setting anytime soon, vocalist, guitarist, and multi-instrumentalist Aidan Baker speaks of its importance as a thematic and logistical bridge to the duo’s upcoming new long-player, as they head for Europe this week, including a brace of dates around Ireland, and a Leeside stop this Saturday at the upstairs venue in Lavitt’s Quay bar Nudes.

“Jumper is kind of an outlier for us, in a few different ways. One, it’s a super-limited cassette release, and we were invited by [Germany-based record label] Momentarily, to contribute to their series of projects, where they do cassettes in unique packaging, all handmade, all designed by Thomas from the label. So we knew it would be limited, and kind-of a special release.

“So in those kinds of situations, we generally try to do something different than what we would normally present as, like, an album ‘proper’. So in a way, this is kind of a stopgap between our last album, [2022’s collaborative effort] Labyrinthine, in progress, which will, hopefully, be out next year.”

While the temptation is there to ask about the upsides and challenges of not only creating or improvising a longform work like Jumper, but in tying it together on production or release levels, it’s merely the latest in a long and prolific string of releases across different physical and digital formats, and tackling projects like this has been par for the course across Baker’s body of work.

“That’s part of our methodology, I suppose, that we look to the music, to the sound, to the process of making sound, as a suggestion of how to proceed, so it’s like sort of live composition, I suppose, in that as we’re creating music, it generates more music. So, like a self-replicating feedback loop, so to speak. So particularly with an album like Jumper, that’s more about experimentation and longform, deep meditation, deep sound, whatever you want to call it... that becomes the moment itself.”

That output like Jumper continues to make its way to the wider world is testament to the enduring appeal of the band’s work, a constantly forward-thinking and prolific body of longform releases, split undertakings with other artists, and myriad reissues and reversions, etc. The Nadja project marked 20 years in its current, live-duo form last year, after beginning life as a solo project for Baker to explore various textures of heaviness, and Baker discusses the maintenance of that creative or exploratory impulse.

“Well, it is a challenge, I will say that. To start, just the idea that seeking inspiration from something, externally or internally, and then working from that moment of being inspired, it doesn’t always happen, of course, and sometimes one can force it, if you’re under a deadline, or you have a specific thing that needs to get done, but maybe that’s counterproductive to be true to one’s artistic self, to get all sort of highfalutin’.

“Yeah, with Nadja, we have such a specific sonic template that it’s limiting, in a way, but it’s also kind of a safety net, so that we know we can create something that will sound like ‘us’ relatively easily. So, personally, I look to my other projects to be more... dunno if adventurous or creative are necessarily the right words, but more liberated in a way, that I’m not constrained by this sound that’s associated with Nadja.

“But that brings it back to the Nadja project, in a way, because I’ll do something with somebody else that’s new and different-sounding, and I think, ‘Oh, we can bring that method or that sound, or whatever, that instrumentation, back to Nadja and see how it changes that project’.”

The duo’s most recent collaborative release is unique even in the band’s lofty canon: An eight-minute written and arranged with the presenters and in-house musicians of music podcast Podsongs, based on the thoughts and sentiments expressed in a corresponding interview with American novelist Steve Erickson. It’s far from the archetypal divine flash of inspiration that casual observers associate with songwriting, one assumes.

“Our approach has remained pretty consistent, in that we try to check our expectations and allow the moment of collaboration to maybe not be the definition of the session, but just allow for that freedom of expression for ourselves and our collaborators, to co-mingle and to ideally create something new, or something different, or unexpected.

“I mean, normally when we go in to a collaborative project, the unexpected is something that is desired.

“I mean, how you can try to capture the unexpected is, I guess, maybe an oxymoron, but that sort of spontaneous, unexpected moment, and the ability to capture that, is something that we really value.”

The duo’s gig on Saturday night at Nudes, presented by Michelle Rumley, formerly booker of Mr Bradley’s, and presently of DIY gig house Tinnitus Promotions, is among their first brace of dates in a few months.

Accompanied by Cork post-metallers Partholón and solo sludge project Skellig, they’ll be looking to clear the cobwebs, to say the very least.

“It’s been about, I think, six years since we last played in Ireland, so we’re looking forward to returning, and we also are playing in Limerick, which will be a first for us. Our last shows were actually in Mexico earlier this year, about six months ago. We haven’t done much in between, so a little bit of a cultural juxtaposition there, from Mexico to Ireland.”

Nadja play upstairs in Nudes on Lavitt’s Quay on Saturday, July 27, with Cork bands Partholón and Skellig in support. Doors 7pm, tickets €15, contact promoters Tinnitus Promotions directly on Instagram for more ticket info: @tinnitus_promotions.

‘Jumper’ is available for streaming and download in its entirety at https://nadja.bandcamp.com/album/jumper, a physical cassette release via Germany’s Momentarily Records is now sold out.