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Today's Artist is a musician from Toronto, Ontario, Canada who has released numerous records both as a solo artist and as part of various side projects, including Nadja, ARC, Caudal and Mnemosyne. He has also written several books of poetry. He has toured around world, and has made appearances at the Unsound Festival, MUTEK, and South by Southwest. He is married to Nadja bandmate, Leah Buckareff. ..... N'Joy
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An accomplished writer and musician, Aidan Baker has his artistic fingers in many pies. After graduating from Montreal's McGill University with a degree in Literature and Religious Studies, Baker released a four-song acoustic cassette as "Aodhan" (the Gaelic spelling of his name). He also teamed up with two fellow Toronto musicians to create ARC, an ambient guitar-driven trio which garnered much praise for its innovation and integrity. The group released three albums, including Two in 2001. Having been published in major literary magazines nationally and internationally, Baker released his debut album Element in 2000. In 2001, he released his follow-up, Letters, a concept album based loosely around letters from both Jack the Ripper and the Marquis de Sade.
Aidan Baker is a classically-trained multi-instrumentalist using the electric guitar as his primary instrument. Using prepared and alternate methods of playing the guitar, along with various electronic effects, Baker creates music which generally falls within the ambient/experimental genre but draws on influences from rock, electronic, classical, and jazz. A highly prolific artist, Baker has released numerous recorded works, both solo and with various group projects, on such independent labels as Gizeh Records, Pleasence Records, Important Records, Alien8 Recordings, and his own imprint, Broken Spine Productions. Baker is also the author of several books of poetry. A regular live performer, Baker has toured extensively around the world, including appearances at such international festivals as FIMAV, SXSW, Incubate, Unsound, and Mutek, among others. Originally from Toronto, Canada, Baker currently resides in Berlin, Germany.
Mnemosyne was a trio formed in Toronto, Canada in 2002 featuring Aidan Baker on guitar, Richard Baker (ARC) on drums, and Rodin Columb on bass. The group created atmospheric post-rock and released one full-length album, The Air Grows Small Fingers, on Piehead Records.
ARC was a trio made up of Aidan Baker, Richard Baker, & Christopher Kukiel formed in Toronto, Canada in 2000. The group’s sound is centred on the melodic loops, textures, & samples provided by heavily-effected guitar & other melodic instruments. This is overlaid with tribal-esque rhythms provided by various percussive instruments, creating a roiling tapestry of both rhythmic & ambient sound, music simultaneously primeval & avant-garde.
Nadja is a duo of Aidan Baker & Leah Buckareff alternately based in Toronto & Berlin. The duo makes music that encompasses experimental/drone, ambient, industrail, & doom metal. Originally formed by Baker in 2003 as a solo project, Buckareff joined in 2005 to bring the project out of the studio & into a live setting. They have since released numerous albums on such labels as Essence Music, Hydrahead Records, & their own label, Broken Spine Productions.
B/B/S/, formed in 2012 in Berlin, Germany, is a trio of Aidan Baker (CA - Nadja, Whisper Room, ARC) on guitar, Andrea Belfi (IT - David Grubbs, Hobocombo, Il Sogno del Marinaio) on drums/electronics, and Erik Skodvin (NO - Svarte Greiner, Deaf Center) on guitar. The group makes improvisational music, combining abstract melodies and experimental drone textures. Their debut album Brick Mask was released in 2013 and their second full-length album Palace was released in 2016, both on Miasmah Records.
Hypnodrone Ensemble is Aidan Baker & Eric Quach (aka Thisquietarmy) joined by three drummers, Felipe Salazar (Caudal, Muerte En Pereira), Jérémie Mortier (Alice in the Cities, Lady Shot from a Tree), and Dave Dunnett (Man Meets Bear), to create propulsive, poly-rhythmic space rock. Hypnodrone Ensemble released their live debut in 2014 on Consouling Sounds & a studio-recorded follow up in 2015 on Calostro Recordings.
Whisper Room is a trio of Aidan Baker (guitar), Jakob Thiesen (drums/effects), & Neil Wiernik (bass/effects). The three members of Whisper Room moved in similar musical circles in Toronto & Montreal for many years, sporadically playing together &/or sharing stages, but did not actively come together as a group until late 2006. As an improvisational unit combining their disparate musical backgrounds, the trio creates music which explores the conjunction of electronic rhythms & textures with the pulsations & psychedelics of shoegaze & krautrock music. They released their debut full-length album, Birch White on Elevation Recordings and their follow-up The Cruelest Month on Consouling Sounds in 2014
Adoran is a duo consisting of Aidan Baker on drums & Dorian Williamson on bass. The project makes music combining elements of post-rock, drone, industrial, and sludge. Their self-titled debut album was released in 2012 and their second album Children of Mars is the autumn of 2015, both by Consouling Sounds.
Caudal was a trio featuring Aidan Baker on guitar, Gareth Sweeney on bass, & Felipe Salazar on drums. Baker’s multi-layered, heavily affected guitar overlays Sweeney & Salazar’s driving, propulsive rhythm section creating music equally influenced by krautrock, post-punk, and spacerock. Their debut album Forever In Another World was released in 2013 Oaken Palace Records. Their second full-length album Ascension was released by Consouling Sounds in 2014.
Infinite Light Ltd was a collaborative project between Aidan Baker, Nathan Amundson (Rivulets), and Mat Sweet (Boduf Songs). The trio released one album combining folk, ambient, and shoegaze sounds on the German label Denovali Records in 2011.
Scythling was a collaborative project between Aidan Baker and Josh Rothenburger of Bloody Panda exploring sounds conflating dark-ambient and doom metal. The group released one album, Smokefall, with various guest contributors on Aurora Borealis records in 2012.
WERL is a duo of Aidan Baker on guitar with Swedish drummer Tomas Järmyr creating improvisational music which explores noise, metal, drone, & freejazz. Their debut release came out in 2016 on Consouling Sounds and their follow-up is forthcoming September 2017 on Wolves&Vibrancy/Dio Drone Records.
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Here's an album by Arc which is Aidan Baker (Nadja) with on drums and percussion - Richard Baker and on electronic percussion - Christopher Kukiel. Thanks heavens for the balance in life. And that is entirely what you'll get listening to this lovely thing called Glassine 1 on A Silent Place Records. It's packaged in a lovely cardboard foldy thing and the music is new age jungle noises while experimental tinklings glide haplessly from swinging vines (like Tarzan but without the man cry). The few times I've been massaged this sort of stuff has been played in the background. It's possibly new age at times but I think it's interesting enough to distance itself away from the hour long nature albums with whales and squirrels barking at each other. It does create a pleasant feeling though and those who enjoy the lighter side of Mr Baker will verily like this beast o' pleasure. Recorded live by - Jamie Todd, Eric Sylken at the Ambient Ping in Toronto, 03/07/2006.
<a href="https://multiup.org/d82958218e7e4098ec02e0692cbdec3b">ARC - Glassine 1 </a> ( flac 344mb)
01 Glisten 12:25
02 Glace 16:22
03 Glascular 14:56
04 Glower 16:07
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A new landscape is painted out of darkness by progressive strokes of the dawn. The finished piece is neither night nor day, but the transformation itself. Aidan Baker's (Nadja) "Book Of Nods" crests experimental peaks in similarly paced sonic transmigrations. His lustrous chimera blooms open in shifting onion layers built out of slow-moaning guitar, flute, organ and drums. The resonant frequencies of quietly crashing nodes vibrate the ozone with a sub-textural beating of multi-pianic feathers. Baker's prior metallic inclinations lend in heaviness, adding a certain stylistic thud to Terry Riley-like territories, and colouring portions almost as if they were middle passages in some sprawling prog excursion. A soft eruption of synchronous sweet airs.
<a href="https://www.imagenetz.de/GJRHr"> Aidan Baker - Book of Nods</a> ( flac 234mb)
01 Love 7:59
02 Survival 19:10
03 Obsession 10:56
04 Good & Evil 15:20
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Canadian musicians Aidan Baker and Jim DeJong (aka The Infant Cycle) have used the "gentleman's kit" of modern experimenters for creating the compositions of this disk: guitar, bass, tapes, samples, feedback generator, playouts and thumb piano. Four album tracks correspond with four seasons, four states of the soul... Summer - repetitive loops become overgrown with the juicy flesh of atonal sound and transform into sampled rhythms flown over by a soft guitar tune. Autumn - the rhythm is reduced to a hardly evident monotonous shroud, the atmosphere becomes more melodic and melancholic and in the end turns into a heart-piercing guitar solo. Winter - time for sleep and detachment: icy ringing, the slow breath of bass impulses, the rustling of electronics and sluggish drones painting vast snowy soundscapes. And finally spring - the drone ambient nature unfolds large as life, majestic sonic waves sweep accompanied by a swarm of tiny sounds awoken to life again... The first two tracks were recorded in 2001 (and released on CD-R by the Italian label Blade Records in 2002 in a very limited edition), two others were recorded in 2005 and thus completed the natural cycle of this album.
<a href="https://mir.cr/DFVSSD38">Aidan Baker & The Infant Cycle - Rural Sprawl-</a> ( flac 295mb)
01 Summer 15:25
02 Temperature Drop 21:24
03 You Left Your Breath On My Window 14:37
04 Rights Of Spring 12:36
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Toronto based Aidan Baker and Montreal based Tim Hecker pair up to deliver an abstract and experimental ambient piece on a Canadian Alien8 Recordings. This project could easily be tagged as "Chamber Music for White Noise, Semi-Acoustic Instruments & Distorted Electronic Guitars and Pianos". The presence of Aidan Baker is unmistakable, not only by contrast, but also in character. Tim Hecker's work sums his best in order for a third language to develop. Electronic "Chamber Music" that has both a dark and bright counterpart, blended in a language that is common for the 2 musicians. The balance in performance & music-composition, is very inspired and maybe even respectful of their respective means of expression and need for freedom, but never losing sense of the "whole picture". Short- timed for today's standards less than 35 minutes, although the very long list of sections, they actually add up only to 7 individual songs, tastefully connected, as if parts of a symphony. That is one of TH's great achievements, the use of distorted ensemble music DE-CONSTRUCTED first, in able to Re-construct it later into a new personal "aestetique". (his new work "Virgins" relies mainly on that). Aidan Baker carries the weight of providing the "bright" counterparts (small feat) with his un-common ability to skip as always the predictable road, in favor of unexplored ones, without being extreme.(his solo work is by far more "universal" than Hecker's). Balanced, ORIGINAL, daring and beautiful without intention, in short, sublime! In hope of more collaborations between this creative pair of composers and performers. The overdriven guitars combined with hiss, crackle and static, vibrate feverishly across the frequency spectrum, occasionally revealing a hidden pattern, a loose structure, and a graceful melody. The paced slow-core riffs, rolling at a speed of a sleeping giant, are fed back into themselves and split through a harmonic meat grinder. All this is again mashed up, tweaked out, and faded in through a torrent of bit-crushed digitally violated audio waves that give your speakers (and ears) a massive workout. Fantasma Parastasie is a relaxing fatigue - it cradles you gently by screaming its head off. Thus, together, Backer and Hecker, define an oxymoron of ambient noise or shoegazer metal. This should be a special treat for those with a taste for Belong, Ben Frost, Fennesz, Jasper TX, and Lawrence English. Where as Baker has a bucket of upcoming albums, too many to fit in a paragraph,
<a href="https://www.sendspace.com/file/24hexl"> Aidan Baker & Tim Hecker - Fantasma Parastasie -</a> ( flac 205mb)
1 Phantom on a Pedestal I 0:15
2 Phantom on a Pedestal II 0:44
3 Phantom on a Pedestal III 0:29
4 Phantom on a Pedestal IV 1:20
5 Phantom on a Pedestal V 0:20
6 Phantom on a Pedestal VI 0:32
7 Phantom on a Pedestal VII 0:44
8 Phantom on a Pedestal VIII 0:29
9 Phantom on a Pedestal IX 0:26
10 Phantom on a Pedestal X 0:26
11 Hymns to the Idea of Night I 0:23
12 Hymns to the Idea of Night II 0:29
13 Hymns to the Idea of Night III 0:41
14 Hymns to the Idea of Night IV 0:29
15 Hymns to the Idea of Night V 0:46
16 Hymns to the Idea of Night VI 0:40
17 Hymns to the Idea of Night VII 0:28
18 Hymns to the Idea of Night VIII 0:25
19 Hymns to the Idea of Night IX 0:11
20 Hymns to the Idea of Night X 0:14
21 Hymns to the Idea of Night XI 0:28
22 Auditory Spirits I 0:27
23 Auditory Spirits II 0:14
24 Auditory Spirits III 0:16
25 Auditory Spirits IV 0:16
26 Auditory Spirits V 0:17
27 Auditory Spirits VI 0:26
28 Auditory Spirits VII 0:28
29 Auditory Spirits VIII 0:16
30 Auditory Spirits IX 0:32
31 Auditory Spirits X 0:12
32 Auditory Spirits XI 0:14
33 Skeleton Dance I 0:18
34 Skeleton Dance II 0:14
35 Skeleton Dance III 0:23
36 Skeleton Dance IV 0:16
37 Skeleton Dance V 0:20
38 Skeleton Dance VI 0:17
39 Skeleton Dance VII 0:13
40 Skeleton Dance VIII 0:11
41 Skeleton Dance IX 0:13
42 Skeleton Dance X 0:13
43 Skeleton Dance XI 0:17
44 Gallery of the Invisible Woman I 0:08
45 Gallery of the Invisible Woman II 0:11
46 Gallery of the Invisible Woman III 0:20
47 Gallery of the Invisible Woman IV 0:10
48 Gallery of the Invisible Woman V 0:17
49 Gallery of the Invisible Woman VI 0:21
50 Gallery of the Invisible Woman VII 0:31
51 Gallery of the Invisible Woman VIII 0:41
52 Gallery of the Invisible Woman IX 0:33
53 Gallery of the Invisible Woman X 0:56
54 Gallery of the Invisible Woman XI 3:04
55 Dream of the Nightmare I 0:25
56 Dream of the Nightmare II 0:15
57 Dream of the Nightmare III 0:17
58 Dream of the Nightmare IV 0:41
59 Dream of the Nightmare V 0:44
60 Dream of the Nightmare VI 0:09
61 Dream of the Nightmare VII 0:28
62 Dream of the Nightmare VIII 0:16
63 Dream of the Nightmare IX 0:15
64 Dream of the Nightmare X 0:31
65 Dream of the Nightmare XI 0:13
66 Fantasma-Parastasie 4:50
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