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BAKER, AIDAN + VALDIVIA, BRANDON  Live 2008-14-11  3" CD   (Universal Tongue)   7.50


A twenty minute live performance from the 2008 Lab30 Festival in Germany between Berlin transplant and C-Blast drone-guitar fave Aidan Baker and Canadian free-improv percussionist Brandon Valdivia has been documented here for posterity on a 3" disc, released in a limited run of 323 hand-numbered copies. Packaged in a miniature Dvd-style case with full color artwork that was provided by Mories from Gnaw Their Tongues, this release showcases the improvised trance-rock side of Aidan Baker that I usually only hear whenever I throw on something from his old Toronto outfit Arc. Baker and Valdivia start off their set with a soft warm blur of guitar feedback that slowly lilts through space, forming a shifting chordal blur of melody that after a minute or so is joined by restrained, shuffling free-jazz drumming and meandering, spidery guitar figures and washes of keyboard drift, building this eerie, krautrock-like vibe. Aidan gradually adds more guitar, layering fragments of delayed melody and echoing feedback, and drops in bits of fast picking and flurries of harmonic notes that he smears into clouds of ethereal sound, and it sort of sounds like Tangerine Dream or Klaus Schulze mixed with free improvised drumming. Deeper in, they really begin to open things up as the drumming becomes more energetic, taking off on a continuous volley of fills and rolls that sets off waves of turbulent energy while the guitar and electronics are shot skyward, emitting huge incandescent clouds of shimmering cosmic drift and nebulous synth-guitar melodies. The latter half gets a little more dissonant and intense with some distorted blues guitar shapes appearing and darkening the sound, dropping into stretches of quiet percussive murmur and skeletal space-blooze and oceanic drone, then kicking back into some locomotive chug towards the end, where the musicians lock briefly into a throbbing motorik groove for a moment before unfolding altogether into a final sprawling mass of gorgeous free-floating kosmiche formlessness.


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