Nadja, Sannhet & Sum of R at Urban Spree / Thursday, 12.4.2018

Nadja is a duo of multi-instrumentalist Aidan Baker and bassist Leah Buckareff active since 2005 and credited as one of the progenitors of the genres ‘drone doom’ or ‘metalgaze’- heavy atmospheric music which combines the darkness and volume of doom metal and industrial with the textures and melodicism of shoegaze and ambient/electronic music.

Sannhet have always been hard to classify. Since 2010, the Brooklyn trio’s played instrumental music that’s heavy and light, cinematic and intimate, dense but minimal. You could call them “post” something, “experimental metal,” or “math rock,” but none of that’s quite right and the band has thrown another wrinkle into the mix with So Numb. While they don’t write lyrics, they do write subtexts. They pen love letters, extended epistles, and suicide notes, all without words. With So Numb, Sannhet create a new world out of very few ingredients.

[bandcamp width=100% height=120 album=685965204 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 tracklist=false artwork=small]

Switzerland’s SUM OF R exists since 2008 and was created by Reto Mäder (URAL UMBO, RM74) to construct/deconstruct sound in ways that infest and cloud the interior of the mind. Sum Of R creates slow moving instrumental music with a sensibility for hypnotic and complex song structures. Their intense and pulsating sound is influenced by lumbering doom, drone, post-metal, ambient, noiserock, psychedelic and cinematic post-rock.

[bandcamp width=100% height=120 album=2994964682 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 tracklist=false artwork=small]

Sum Of R’s ritualistic take on expanding sound layers is deepened by the rawness of an unconventional metal atmosphere plunged into darkness, light and its reflection. Their live performances as a duo are characterized by a cyclical process involving bass guitars, drums, effects, samples and drones to create a unique and dense whole which is more than the sum of its parts.