Nadja is not some spooky femme fatale, nor a Scandinavian pop singer. Nadja is Aidan Baker, crafting a massive wall of sound that is heavy and dark, yet rich with life. And now with Leah Buckareff on bass guitar, Nadja are laying waste to villages with their live show and laying down tonnes of music - albums on Alien8, and collaborations and limited editions on strange labels around the world. Bodycage, the latest vinyl, is pretty amazing, layering sounds of life and sworls of song and ghost voices and screams, slowly calcifying into soft concrete slabs, and dissolving into a noise vortex. In August, Nadja are playing Bummer In The Summer and Wavelength, which should be pretty seismic. Aidan and Leah gave Demian the dark truth.

Who are you? How are you?

Leah: I am Leah Buckareff. I am overheating.
Aidan: I'm pretty sticky right now, too.

How did you get where you are musically?

A: I've been playing music for years. Started out on classical piano and flute as a youngster, started teaching myself guitar in my early teens. Have also, over the years, played saxophone, drums, and bassoon, with varying degrees of success.

And where are you going? Does Nadja have a strong sense of direction or destination?

L: Definitely still evolving. Nadja began as an Aidan Baker project, and it very much still is, although it's slowly becoming more of a mutual pursuit. The direction of each album changes, and where one piece will be more concrete others will be more experimental. It's hard to say which direction things will go.

Are you all about sound and tone and texture? Are there images and plot and theme in your music?

A: Yes. Or, at least, a combination of '˜yes'.

Aidan, you're also a writer. Does that relate in any way to your music?

A: There is a certain aesthetic crossover. Music is as much a language, a means of communication, as any verbal or written. I suppose I could say I write to express what I can't musically, and vice versa, but I'm not entirely sure that's true.

Bodycage, your new album, is about an actual disease that turns bruised muscle into bone. Which is awesome. People need to know about this. Why do so many '˜heavy' musicians seem to keep a medical dictionary on their bookshelves?

A: I suppose they're delving into one of humanity's most basic fears, other than fear of the unknown: fear of the internal. It's easy to frighten people with bodily malfunction; it's not necessarily easy to do it well or in a sophisticated way. Compare, say, David Cronenberg to Cannibal Corpse.

Alien8 put out your debut and will be releasing your next album. How'd.you end up on a Montreal label, better known for bands like The Unicorns and Think About Life?

A: I know Alien8 more through artists like Tim Hecker, The Shalabi Effect, and Acid Mothers Temple and obviously we have more in common with them than The Unicorns or Lesbians On Ecstasy. Alien8 told us they wanted to release heavier material, though still with a more experimental bent. To date, we've had better responses in Montreal than Toronto. Maybe audiences are a little more open-minded there.

Are Nadja most '˜at home' in the experimental, metal or indie scenes?

L: The experimental scene has been most accomodating - the metal and indie scenes are fairly divided, and Nadja falls under the category of 'trend'.
A: Experimental venues are usually more capable of handling our sound as well. We've had a number of soundpersons in metal clubs say to us, 'œI couldn't get a handle on your frequencies.'?

What's the live show like, then? What's the chemistry like when you're playing?

A: Live, we try to bury everything/everyone with sound. Sonic sublimation.
L: We're highly compatible. I can take direction from Aidan without him actually directing me. I always have a sense of where he's going.

Are you going to rise up like a sea monster and devour us all? Are you going to descend with fire and burn us alive? Describe your Wavelength performance, using the ridiculous/colourful metaphor of your choice.

A: We will quench your musical thirsts with the liquidity of our soothing savagery.

by Demian Carynnyk