Nadja & Fawn Limbs: Vestigial Spectra

While Full of Hell and Nothing’s latest split release has had tongues wagging over the past week, perhaps it’s another that should equally be lauded that has been somewhat overlooked in comparison: Nadja and Fawn Limbs’ Vestigial Spectra.

During a conversation with Aidan Baker last year, he expressed the need to keep exploring sound worlds in a bid to escape rehashing past glories. Whether it be a part of Nadja, in a solo capacity or collaboration, for an artist as prolific as Baker, it’s not the easiest task, and one that he must continuously scour the globe in order to push things forward.

And while Baker has done that to great effect, most recently with his wonderful Trio Not Trio series, this time sees the Berlin-based experimentalist and Leah Buckareff join forces with Eeli Helin and Lee Fisher of chaos worshipers, Fawn Limbs. This latest unison perhaps one of the fiercest Nadja has been a part of.

Sound Coalition: An Interview with Trio Not Trio

Between Fawn Limbs’ lust for extremities and Nadja’s expertise in finding space and creating their own brand of mayhem, what the pair channel on Vestigial Spectra is a raw horror and burning contempt, resulting in a menacing barbed net of destruction.

One may not think that with an opening stanza like Isomerisch, however it comes with its own brand of scorn. With a haunting synth dreadscape, it’s like being led through an abattoir re-imagined by William Gibson in 2083.

And from here the chaos unfolds in dramatic circumstances, starting with Black Body Radiation. A series of splintered blast beats pushing against Helin’s guttural yawn that is part bile part venom; this thunderous roar embodying Vestigial Spectra.

There’s still plenty of meat on the bone, of course. Take Cascading Entropy – a mathcore-inspired hot current of chaos, and with Nadja’s added spatial embellishments, the contrast between serenity and disorder is frightening.

On Redshifted, Nadja unveil their own foul sorcery, as Baker’s laser-beam sonics and Buckareff’s bass weight just about quells the beast of Helin; his mirthless barks from the deep mirroring the early musings of one Aaron Turner.

Into the Void: The Month in Experimetal

Then there’s Blueshift. A forcefield of sharp static emitting an array of sci-fi greens and blues. It’s the sound of paranoia, which is something Distilled in Observance is not. Unhinged screaming walls of noise, this is where grindcore and post-metal collide, and in a world that continues to reach new levels of extremities every day, Distilled in Observance feels like the soundtrack to it.

There’s no let up on that score with the epic closing track, Metastable Ion Decay. A sheer brute of noise and power as both bands showcase their finest facets in what is like a volcanic eruption. In many ways, that’s what best describes Vestigial Spectra on the whole. In all its uncompromising, unadulterated onslaught of noise, Nadja and Fawn Limbs rip, tear, and barrel through the earth’s core at lightning speed.

Vestigial Spectra is out now via Roman Numeral (US), Wolves And Vibrancy (EU), Crucible Art (Australia), Sludgelord Records (cassette). Purchase from Bandcamp.