As any follower knows, Nadja have an extremely high musical
output rate. But you couldn’t blame them for milking commercial teats as it’s
almost all been original music. Over God knows how many albums during the ten
years since their conception Nadja have released only three compilations and
four live albums – a drastically small percentage of their discography, with
the majority made from full-length albums. So it’s nice to see this platter of
previously limited vinyl-only releases “excised” and made available to a wider
audience. There’s a good chunk of listening to do here over two CDs with the
total run-time coming to two hours, thirty-four minutes, and forty-one seconds.
Excision gives us a good cross-section of Nadja’s
broad array of doom/drone stylings. It opens with “Jornada del Muerto”, not the
strongest track on the album, but a crushingly heavy piece of glacial doom that
is as close to SunnO))) as Nadja have ever been. “Perichoresis” has a more
progressive approach, moving through stages of ambient, post-sludge drone and
noise. This song is truly epic and melancholy and is a pretty damn good example
of how powerful Nadja can be. “Spahn” provides a more stripped-back, deep space
excursion. “Kriplyana” is pure ambient drone, sharing more in common with the
likes of Gavin Bryars than doom metal. Swapping CDs “Autosomal (Version 2)”
builds up with ten minutes of snail-paced post-rock before a dream-like tide of
swirling distorted doom gushes forth, a tsunami in slow-motion. On “Kitsune (Fox
Drone)” we bathe in heavenly static; this track is trademark Nadja droning
bliss. “Autosomal (Version 3)” is more ambient drone, this time on the noisy,
psychedelic side, excellent for a twisted chillout. with “Clinging to the Edge
of the Sky” concludes with fifteen minutes of peaceful post rock.
There are no outstanding criticisms to make; it’s overly
long and the songs don’t join together at the seams naturally, but that’s to be
expected from this kind of compilation. Standalone, each song is pretty strong
but I think this is really meant for fans only, specifically ones who missed
out on the limited edition original pressings of this music. If you want to be
introduced to Nadja, I’d recommend starting somewhere a little more spectacular
like Corrasion, or Skin Turns to Glass. Excision is still
a quality buy if you find it cheap or something, though.
In short: It’s not an essential Nadja album, but for the fan
who wants to delve deeper into their massive body of work, Excision is a
worthwhile way to relax in style for a while.
Standout tracks: “Perichoresis”, “Autosomal (Version 3)”
Score: 7.5
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