mwalker (Curator)

As one of the grand finales for this year’s fantastic Unsound Festival (making it’s first appearance in NYC), the excellent Canadian experimental-drone-ambient-shoegazer-doom-metal duo Nadja -- Aidan Baker and Leah Buckareff – conjured an absolutely massive soundworld of near-impenetrable density at ISSUE. Nadja design jagged, skyscraping architectures out of scalding and charred streams of noise and distortion, abstracting gestures of drone and doom into complex, infinitely detailed structures of intense beauty. Amidst sprawling ambient landscapes that are at turns placid, quivering, frightening, and impassable, Baker and Buckareff erect looming, spiraling towers that jut, writhe, and twist into the boundless vertical dimension before culminating into screaming spires of searing energy.  Be braced to emerge/escape in a collapsed crawl – drained, soaked, cleansed, and exorcised.

This Friday (2/19/10), ISSUE’s first-ever Artist-in-Residence Collective returns for their second monthly concert. The ensemble consists of Shannon Fields, Laura Ortman, Matt Lavelle, Shelley Burgon, Ryan Sawyer, and Jon Natchez (long-time collaborators from their 10+ years of work together in the now-concluded Stars Like Fleas). For the second residency concert, Jon Natchez and Matt Lavelle will present works to be performed by the collective. Shelley Burgon and Ryan Sawyer will lead the ensemble on 3/26/10.

To get everyone amped for the second installment of the residency, Shannon Fields and Laura Ortman have shared the recordings from their fantastic first performance. I‘ve included all three compositions from the show in a mix included below.