Aidan Baker – Half Lives

Tracklist
CD1:

01. Mountains Sweat Clouds I
02. Mountains Sweat Clouds II
03. Creature (Intro)
04. You Are A Creature Of Darkness
05. Mountains Sweat Clouds III
06. Lighttrap I
07. Crow (Intro)
08. A Black Crow Flies
09. Lighttrap II
10. Lighttrap III

CD2:

01. As I Walked On Dead Earth I
02. Half Life
03. Until I Came To The River
04. Fear Of Open Spaces I
05. It Was All, All In A Dream
06. Somewhere In The World Trees Are Growing
07. Fear Of Open Spaces II
08. Then Came The Storm
09. And I Raise My Eyes To The Hills
10. Still There Is The Sound Of Thunder
11. As I Walked On Dead Earth II

Half Lives is the Gizeh Records follow-up album to Baker’s acclaimed 2013 album Already Drowning. While that album was built around the guest vocals of female singers – including Carla Bozulich, Jessica Bailiff and Geneviéve Castrée (O Paon) – Half Lives comprises two separate but interconnected albums and Baker’s loose concept was that they would bridge the more abstract/experimental and song-oriented natures of his work. Both albums were recorded in August 2014 in Berlin and are the product of initial extended improvisations that were then arranged into coherent pieces – ‘constructed’ rather than ‘composed’. In these senses, parallels can be made with artists such as Bark Psychosis, Low and The For Carnation, for whom experimentation with texture and timbre has never been a reason to abandon the song form.

Where these two albums differ is in their sonic pallettes. Mountains Sweat Clouds is based around the electric guitar whereas As I Walked On Dead Earth features primarily acoustic guitar. However, any sense that this might provide an easy separator is quickly erased by Baker’s supreme skills at arranging and layering his material, featuring extensive use of organ, synths, percussion, field recordings and vocals. His curiously dispassionate yet emotional vocal is actually one of the strongest elements to the albums – conceived once the music was complete, it provides the thread along which the pieces flow. Taken together, the two albums that comprise Half Lives are further evidence of Baker’s expressive, shapeshifting sound.