Nadja is the project that involves Aidan Baker (guitars/vocals/drum programming) and Leah Buckareff (bass/vocals). They have released a new album called Luminous Rot which is out now digitally via Southern Lord and today also comes the LP version. According to the press release, For the new album, Luminous Rot, the duo retain their overblown/ambient sound, and explore shorter and more tightly structured songs reflecting their interests not only in metal, but post-punk, cold-wave, shoegaze, and industrial.

Thematically, the album explores ideas of ‘first contact’ and the difficulties of recognising alien intelligence. This was in part inspired by reading such writers as Stanislaw Lem and Cixin Lui — in particular, theories on astro-physics, multi-dimensionality, and spatial geometry in “The Three Body Problem” — as well as Margaret Wertheim’s “A Field Guide To Hyperbolic Space,” about mathematician Daina Taimina’s work with crochet to illustrate hyperbolic space and geometry.

Check the full streaming below and a list of artists and tracks which have inspired this new work.

They explains: “While our new album Luminous Rot is one of our more concise and structured albums, we are not unknown for writing and recording long, sprawling tunes. We also appreciate a good, long-form song or album that one can immerse or lose one’s self in…We have spoken before about our love for single-song albums like Corrupted’s El Mundo Frio and Sleep’s Dopesmoker, but here is a list of few other favourite long-form tunes from the more ambient/experimental side of things, rather than metal”

Tony Conrad & Faust – The Side Of Woman And Mankind. We only discovered this 1973 album Outside The Dream Syndicate relatively recently, but the contrast of Conrad’s atonal, droning violin with Faust’s repetitive, pulsing rhythms is wonderfully hypnotic.

Gnod – The Somnambulist’s Tale. Normally heavy, dense, and abrasive, Gnod’s The Somnambulist’s Tale is minimal and ambient, an extended percussive drone mediation with atmospheric drones and electronics, suggestive of late nights and (g)nodding out/off…

This Heat – Repeat. ‘Repeat’ is an extended mix of This Heat’s ’24 Track Loop’ from their self-titled debut…fractured, fragmentary electronic sounds over clattering, dubby rhythms and percussive tones, simultaneously groovy and abstract, disorienting and welcoming…

The Necks – Drive By. Slow-moving, pulsating, repetitive, recursive, immersive electro-jazz, evocative of long drives in dusty deserts, getting lost (in sound, in space)…

Circle – Duunila. A unique release in Circle’s massive catalogue, Miljard is probably their most abstract and minimal album…quiet, atmospheric, drifting, wintery guitars and piano that seemingly almost come together to form a cohesive tune only to fracture and drift away into further abstraction. ‘Duunila’ is a favourite track, but the whole two-hour album is quite beautiful.