Nadja & Cokiyu - Mirror Flake

Is it just me or are Nadja flippin brilliant :)

The whole metal thing is completely not my scene yet Nadja's take on the genre, "sludge" metal by all accounts, is something extraordinary. It may have alot to do with one half of Nadja being the talented Aidan Baker, a recent collaborator of Tim Hecker's and a highly rated drone/ambient artist in his own right. Its these elements that the introduce to Metal that make is so sucessful, dark, ambient and brutal at times, like a Pelican single played at 33rpm.

Nadja - ’Base Fluid’ - free internet single.


Last Fm: Nadja is Aidan Baker (guitars/vocals/piano/woodwinds/drum programming) and Leah Buckareff (bass/vocals). Originally formed in 2002 in Toronto as a solo project, the now-duo creates ambient drone metal, combining ambient electronics and fragmentary vocals with snail-crawl, epic riffs and dirge-like percussion, all tempered with a certain ethereal melodicism such that the listener is enveloped in a swirling, sublimating wall of amorphous, cacophonous sound…
To date Nadja has released eleven full-length CDs, including collaborations with Atavist and Fear Falls Burning, four EPs, splits with Moss and Methadrone, a live album, and numerous re-recordings of earlier works.

Their most recent releases include a re-recording of their 2002 debut full length, Touched, and a full length entitled Radiance of Shadows, which consists of entirely new material along with a re-recording of their 2004 EP I Have Tasted the Fire Inside Your Mouth.

Cokiyu - Mirror Flake
I've been slowly getting more and more mesmerised by the Japanese IDM experimental scene over the past year or so, starting off with and being astounded by the more epic types World's End Girlfriend, Kashiwa Daisuke, Yasushi Yoshida would be the immediate names that spring to mind. More recently though perhaps via Akira Kosemura the shorter tracked glitchier bands, bands that remind me of the wonderful Aoki Takamasa & Tujiko Noriko 28 album that Fatcat released many years ago that had me completley won over, have pushed themselves to the forefront of my attention, Flica, Haruka Nakamura and today Cokiyu, a name familiar to me for her work with the highly (if you could recommend someone as highly as he deserves to be) recommended Aus.
Mirror Flake is dreamy, my new most overused descriptive term ;) twinkletronica at it's best, song titles like Hedgehogs Wedding perhaps give away its delicacy. The title track Mirror Flake mixes piano and glitches against the angelic voice with superb results. Another lovely album well worth your attention.

Website
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Last FM:

Cokiyu is Yukiko Ito. She was born in Ehime, Japan in 1978. She finished her master degree of musicology study in a music design course of Kunitachi College of Music in 2002. From her student time till now, she creates the tape works using Max/MSP, the works for voice and woodwind instruments, and percussion instruments. In 2002, she started to do live performances in Tokyo. She also sings in some works of other Japanese artists such as Aus and Mexico.

World's End Girlfriend & Sparky's Magic Piano Reviewed

World's End Girlfriend - Hurtbreak Wonderland (Human Highway)

Where this time last year I was being seriously blown away by Johann Johansson’s delightful Ibm 1401 - a User’s Manual this year there is a new album in my life that touches on every beautiful note given to man, a musical vision steeped both in classical and electronic music yet never sounding (despite its brilliance) as harsh as Venetian Snares Rossz Csillag Allat Szuletett, instead in bathes itself with lush sweeps of field noises, birds singing and ever so occasionally blasts of jazz like discordance.

The echoes of piano that pass through Birthday Resistance are sublime but these are soon forgotten as Katsuhiko Maeda begins the 13 minute trip through 100 Years of Choke, a song as life affirming as the video for We Are The Massacre is brutal. This is truly something special, a gentle comedown for the fans of Mono whose interest in World's End Girlfriend must have been triggered by his recent Palmless Prayer collaboration. That was good, this is ten times better. If you need some inspiration in your life then you couldn't do much better than this.

World's End Girlfriend - 100 Years of Choke mp3
World's End Girlfriend - Ghost Of A Horse Under The Chandelier mp3

Myspace

Sparky's Magic Piano - Feel The Beat and Do It Anyway (MelodyFactory)
An album of sweet and naive pop songs, the opening four of which would've made for a fantastic EP. Yet this is not to say that the rest is throwaway, far from it. Instead simply that the openers Like Falling in L*ve, Mend, the staccato robo pop of Coffee Song & Something Somewhere are near perfect pop much in the vein of all things Amelia Fletcher, i.e. Heavenly, Talulah Gosh, Tender Trap etc, perhaps Tender Trap particularly as the sound is more electronic than you'd expect from the aforementioned.

Sparky and You Like Her are more sparse, losing the electronics and falling somewhere between Whistler and the Englishness of Black Box Recorders Sarah Nixey or The Pines Pam Berry.

Kaliedoscope is lovely in the way that Kenickie's Acetone was lovely, in the way that sometimes when you really want to say something you just can't get those exact thoughts out and so some of the notes strived for aren't quite reached but you know exactly what she means and respect it more for not being afraid to show she's not perfect.

A lovely sweet album of synth pop that worth your attention if initially only for those four great opening tracks.

www.melodyfactory.com/shop
www.myspace.com/sparkysmagicpiano

Sources

Shameless Complacency