Nadja - Skin Turns to Glass

Skin Turns To Glass

#27) Nadja - Skin Turns to Glass (2008)

1. Sandskin
 2. Skin Turns to Glass
 3. Slow Loss
 4. Untitled

Nadja is a band i've been meaning to check out for a while now as i've heard the name mentioned a lot and they always seem to be highly spoken of. i've heard some of Aidan Baker's (founding member) solo stuff and various Nadja tracks here and there and dug what i heard but this is the first time i've listened to a proper Nadja album. The band is made up of Baker and his wife Leah Buckareff, with her providing bass and occasional vocals and Baker handling everything else (listed in the cd booklet as guitar, vocals, flute, piano and drum programming). this is the 2008 version of Nadja's 2nd full length, originally released in 2003. all the tracks have been remastered for this version and tracks 1 and 2 have been lengthened, while track 3 has been shortened. track 4 is a bonus track. 

the music is a kind of shoegazey noisy doom metal (Baker has said he likes the term "dreamsludge" and it's definitely a fitting term.) for only being 2 people these songs are fucking monstrous sounding and epic. each track draws you in and then washes over you with layers upon layers of sound. i feel like this is the type of album that will reward repeated listens since there seems to be so much going on at times. the last track is a 28 minute ambient drone piece that slowly gets noisier and noisier until about the last 3 minutes when a drum beat slowly builds up and then it becomes crazy chaotic noise and screaming. so basically it's like a 2 minute song with a 26 minute intro. overall it's a rad album and it really made me wish i would've gotten into these guys sooner.

with somewhere around 50 releases (including EPs and splits) this is definitely a band i'm going to be spending a lot of time with.