doom gaze | dream sludge | drone metal | ambient | chamber doom | noise | wall of sound
NADJA is Leah Buckareff & Aidan Baker. Their back catalogue is enormous and versatile and growing further since almost two decades. Nadja has established a unique and signature sound which combines the atmospheric textures of shoegaze and ambient or electronic music with the heaviness, density, and volume of metal, noise, and industrial.
This time on tour with THE NAUSEA aka Anju Sing with the debut album Requiem, an album of the violin engaged in a multi-dimensional way… [bringing together] tonal and melodic elements that bridge European vernacular and classical musics, strains of black metal and death metal, and the 20th-century musique concrète, avant-garde and harsh noise disruptions of traditions and boundaries.
Gefördert von der Beauftragten der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien ("BKM") und der Initiative Musik.
Das Konzert wird unterstützt vom Verband für aktuelle Musik Hamburg und der Behörde für Kultur und Medien Hamburg.
NADJA
Nadja is a duo of Aidan Baker and Leah Buckareff, formed in Toronto in 2005, but currently based in Berlin, Germany. The duo makes music which has been described as ambient doom, dreamsludge, or metalgaze. Over their nearly two decade long career, Nadja has established a unique and signature sound which combines the atmospheric textures of shoegaze and ambient or electronic music with the heaviness, density, and volume of metal, noise, and industrial.
The duo has toured extensively around the world—including performances at such festivals as SXSW, FIMAV, Roadburn, Donaufest, Le Guess Who, Incubate, and Unsound—and has shared stages with artists like Earth, OM, Ben Frost, Tim Hecker, Khanate, Neurosis, and Godflesh. Nadja has released numerous albums on many respected underground labels—including Alien8 Recordings, Daymare Records, Southern Lord, Hydrahead Records, Gizeh Records, and Important Records—and their own imprint, Broken Spine Productions.
»It's like lying in bed next to a severely hungover Iggy Pop whilst [Godflesh's] Streetcleaner blasts out of your upstairs neighbours' subwoofer...like a much doomier version of early Spacemen 3. Luminous Rot can often feel slippery and hard to pin down (much like making contact with extra-terrestrials, I suppose) but there's an otherworldly beauty here that unfolds as it gradually washes over you.« – Kez Whelan, The Quietus
»[Nadja] play deep droning Ambient Metal where vague, indistinct sounds evolve or mutate into something altogether more solid, if not monolithic...It is crude but also oddly dreamlike. Baker and Buckareff work with this contradiction, producing a sound that takes brutal, ponderous mono-riffs and turns them into spectral abstractions...Nadja's alchemical process seamlessly transforms ponderous Metal into abstract grandeur and finally a kind of blissful disintegration.« – Tom Ridge, The Wire
THE NAUSEA
Anju Singh (Violin, viola, cello, electronics, voice, creative mixing) aka The Nausea with debut LP: REQUIEM (Absurd Exposition, Buried in Slag and Debris) is an album of the violin engaged in a multi-dimensional way. Though there is also restrained use of percussion, synthesizer and voice, these compositions are centered on the violin itself and its potential for the creation and destruction of melody, dissonance and unrestricted textures, and its capability for creating distinct environments of sound, ritual, and feeling. There are tonal and melodic elements that bridge European vernacular and classical musics, strains of black metal and death metal, and the 20th-century musique concrète, avant-garde and harsh noise disruptions of traditions and boundaries. Harsh noise may be understood as a legitimate form of folk music that developed primarily in Japan and North America, often expressed in community performance (typically in non-professional settings with little to no money circulating), and generally existing outside of Eurocentric music theory, academia, and (moneyed and often inaccessible) High Art contexts. More specifically, the regional variants of North American harsh noise spanning from Southern California to British Columbia developed into a distinct West Coast Harsh Noise subculture in the early 21st-century. In a sense, this period (re)introduced elements of European harmony and Romanticism, with an emphasis on dramatic melody incorporating string instruments, and exploiting the tension between the consonant (“music”) and the dissonant (harsh noise, with no easily discernible or transcribable musical, melodic, rhythmic or lyrical elements; “anti-music”). In the same ways that technology and globalism have expanded the vocabulary of all art forms, harsh noise has deepend and expanded the spectrum of music and sound art (if they are perceived as separate), and thus the potential for creative expression. It may be deemed an act of liberation, confusion, or iconoclasm to connect and merge these forms of music and anti-music; perhaps analogous to smashing an amplified electric guitar or burning a violin as a means of achieving the instrument’s ultimate dramatic and sonic potential, and guiding the ritual object into a symbolic death (Gordon Ashworth, 2024).
* Ermäßigter Eintritt an der Abendkasse für Schüler*innen, Student*innen, Sozialhilfeempfänger*innen.