Toronto-based musician Aidan Baker is ready to reveal his latest LP Half Lives, and Exclaim! has got your exclusive first listen.
The album comes shortly after last month's release of The Confessional Tapes — a collection of salvaged compositions from a hard drive crash — and marks Baker's Gizeh Records follow-up to 2013's Already Drowning.
Half Lives comprises two separate sonic entities — Mountains Sweat Clouds and As I Walked on Dead Earth — though the two albums are undeniably interconnected. Baker's hope was for the two pieces to "bridge the more abstract/experimental and song-oriented natures of his work."
The former is composed of music based on the electric guitar, while the latter emerged from an acoustic incarnation of the same instrument. But with Baker's expertise at manipulating and arranging sound — and with the addition of organ, synths, percussion, field recordings and vocals — he doesn't allow for an obvious separation between the two parts.
All of the music was recorded in Berlin in August 2014. The sessions began as improvisations, which were then worked into coherent pieces. The result is a vast, shapeshifting collection of sonic experimentation, and you can hear both parts in their entirety below.
Half Lives officially arrives on April 7 via Gizeh Records.
The album comes shortly after last month's release of The Confessional Tapes — a collection of salvaged compositions from a hard drive crash — and marks Baker's Gizeh Records follow-up to 2013's Already Drowning.
Half Lives comprises two separate sonic entities — Mountains Sweat Clouds and As I Walked on Dead Earth — though the two albums are undeniably interconnected. Baker's hope was for the two pieces to "bridge the more abstract/experimental and song-oriented natures of his work."
The former is composed of music based on the electric guitar, while the latter emerged from an acoustic incarnation of the same instrument. But with Baker's expertise at manipulating and arranging sound — and with the addition of organ, synths, percussion, field recordings and vocals — he doesn't allow for an obvious separation between the two parts.
All of the music was recorded in Berlin in August 2014. The sessions began as improvisations, which were then worked into coherent pieces. The result is a vast, shapeshifting collection of sonic experimentation, and you can hear both parts in their entirety below.
Half Lives officially arrives on April 7 via Gizeh Records.