Could there be a better way to celebrate Canada's just-ended National Day than by revisiting an artist who exemplifies national reasonableness & avuncularity? Apologies for the clumsy set-up but, well, yes, there could.
One of the many admirable aspects of the country's incredibly rich experimental music 'scene' -almost certainly not anything unitary, but rather a host of separate little pockets of people doing interesting stuff - is how forcefully it gives the lie to the Canuck stereotype. In LMYE's canon of wonderful music from Canada, which runs all the way from Loscil's scintillating Vancouver microsound to Mark Templeton's fragile Edmonton delicacies to Godspeed (& countless spin-offs)'s furious Montreal roar & Tim Hecker's vast, draining soundscapes from the same city (I think), reasonableness & avuncularity are in thankfully short supply.
So too with the the great Aidan Baker. I cherish his music for its unreasonable duration & quantity, its unreasonable fixation on a limited palette of sound, & its anything but avuncular intensity.
See here for an earlier piece (& here for occasional collaborator & current European tour partner thisquietarmy).
After the solo music, the rewarding wider-screen trio settings of Whisper Room & his earlier ARC guise: haven't quite got there with his Nadja yet (though here's parts of a couple of their sometimes magnificent 'covers' of solo tracks like Wound Culture & Beautiful Beast on Belles Betes [Beta-Iactam Ring], to be going on with; NB: blame BIRR's samples for the brutal endings...).
Whisper Room's dense Birch White (Elevation) is highly recommended. ARC's more 'tribally'-inflected stuff too, though it can be difficult to find (but Glassine II due soon, according to A Silent Place).
Hear an earlier near-kraut, spacious version of Whisper Room live & ARC's blissful pulsing & clanking - also with some notably kosmiche flavour (including an occasional riff-out too many for these ears, though don't let that put you off...):
Whisper Room > live at the ambient ping [extract] (from last.fm; possibly originally from Unravelled Brown Cassette Tape Lying on the Highway - Live at the Ambient Ping, Arcolepsy)
ARC > Buddleia (from Sans Titre, 2001-2004, taalem)
ARC > Arise > Four (from The Sun is Bleeding & Has Black Hands, Kokeshidisk)
Interesting interview here, by the way (but can he really mean it when he says that, Whisper Room, Nadja, ARC & solo notwithstanding, "it would be nice to play in another band"?!).
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