The highly prolific Canadian drone/noise/shoegaze musician Aidan Baker seemingly comes out with new albums every few months or so. May it be Nadja, Caudal or solo projects under his own name. One of the more interesting releases among those has been 'Stimmt'' - an album that was released back in 2015, and which hasn't really gotten that much attention. The album packs an interesting mixture of drone, electronic music, noise and noise rock, and offers a couple of really good tracks.
The album starts off with a track titled ''Dance of the Entartet'', which offers some rather weird repetitive half-industrial and half-noise rock. Perhaps something that you would listen to while driving on a snowy highway. It is followed by ''Atemlos'' which is a lot more ambient, but still goes on with this rather weird atmosphere that fits the cover art of this album quite well, as it sounds like something you would hear while wandering frostbitten and delusional on an icy cold Scandinavian road after your car broke down in a blizzard. ''Transverse Motion'' goes further from this with its ambient wanderings developing into some Nadja'esque shoegaze infused drones. ''Mir'' on the other hand feels like a soundtrack to a Russian satellite flying over the said blizzard and recording it from space. Ignorant to the pre-death wanderings and delusions of a certain fellow whose car broke down. This track is followed by the rather heavy distortion filled noise rock track ''Stärken''. One of the best tracks on this album in my opinion. The same could essentially be said about ''Quer'' too, as it packs some pretty Nadja'esque sounds throughout. ''Quer'' is followed by arguebly the best track on this fine album. ''Resolut'' starts from slowly evolving ambient drones with a bassline moving forward like footsteps into the inevitable and inescapable wall of feedback and distortion laden noise.
All in all it can be said that ''Stimmt'' definitely stands out among Aidan Baker's vast discography as one of the more interesting and balanced releases. The album is worth checking out for those who prefer the more ambient works of Aidan Baker, as well as for those who prefer some Nadja'esque walls of noise, whereas the album also packs some rather interesting and unorthodox noise rock pieces.
Some related links:
Bandcamp: https://aidanbaker.bandcamp.com/album/stimmt
