Noise Of Silence Boxset at Aquarius Records

For those who missed the Noise Of Silence boxset, here’s your last chance to secure a copy. A small number of pieces are on the way to San Francisco and will be exclusively carried by our friends at Aquarius Records.

“By now, long time readers of the aQ list know how much we dig Aidan Baker and all his various projects, and it seems that you all do too, based on how many of his records we sell. The sad thing is that so many of his most amazing records were released as super limited cd-r’s, often so limited that we were never able to get any for the shop at all. Such was the case with 2007’s Noise Of Silence. Originally released on Hyperblasted, the amazing Essence Music in Brazil has stepped into re-release it, and as with all their releases, they’ve pulled out all the stops. This is in fact a PRE-ORDER!! For the super deluxe, boxset version of Baker’s reissued Noise Of Silence. We will have the regular single cd non-boxset version, but this right here, this is for the Baker obsessives, like us, like YOU, limited to 122 copies, almost entirely sold out from the label, Essence has graciously set aside about 20 boxes, the LAST 20, for aQ customers, so if you want one, order it now, we’ll get them in sometime in the next few weeks, and they can either ship with your current order, or on their own. You will be charged for the box now, but then the shipping will be sorted out when we actually send the box (and it’ll ship by weight, not as 1 item).

So what’s the big deal about Noise Of Silence. And this fancy box? Well, more on the packaging (and the bonus cd-r) further down, but Noise of Silence, is a doozy, a gorgeous, haunting, 50 minute abstract drone/drift, super cinematic, rife with dark chordal swells, layered shimmer, mysterious disembodied voices, a strange bit of processed sibilance, that could be the vocals processed, but instead becomes weird little shards of soft focus white noise peppering the hushed soundscape, almost like the sonic equivalent of white caps on a blackened sea. It doesn’t take long for the track to blossom into something far from tranquil and drifty, the sound growing more agitated, the vibe more noisy, the atmosphere more dense, the voices more strident, a swirling cacophony, that manages to build to an almost white noise squall, but even them the edges are smoothed out, and the sound, while harsh and heavy, still manages to be darkly droney and weirdly hypnotic, the sounds grinding and crunching, the various tones splintering and crumbling, a heady blown out wildly looped collage that gradually settles into something much more mellow, the last 20 minutes a slowly decaying stretch of ambient dronemusic, the whispery shadows of that cacophony still present, hissing and swirling just below the surface, seriously and surprisingly haunting and demonic Baker, we can definitely imaging this as the score for some experimental foreign horror / art film. Gorgeous stuff for sure, but definitely on the dark side of Baker’s sound, a side we don’t get to her so much any more.

This new version of Noise Of Silence, is presented as a super deluxe, hand made and hand assembled box, painted in blacks and blues, nicely textured, with what appears to be branches or veins, inside the cd is housed in a gorgeous full color digipak, and held in place by black elastic bands, while right next to it, unfold black triangular flaps, and pull out the accordion like set of cards, each one hand painted like the outside of the box, all unique and surprisingly tactile, to reveal the bonus cd-r, a collection of early works and demos, many of which would in fact show up on later releases in altered forms, all culled from the period spanning 1991-1995, and an eclectic collection of early works, that tend toward the raw, the noisy, the aggressive, but still beautiful and lush and droney, some acoustic ballads, some droned out noisescapes, some hushed minimal acoustic drift as well as some darkly psychedelic and dreamy guitar ragas, incredible stuff for sure, and well worth a proper release on their own, but ONLY available as part of this super limited box.”