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Aidan Baker and Thisquietarmy
A Picture of a Picture

Killer Pimp

Posted: Tuesday, March 09, 2010
By: Matthew Johnson
Features Editor

This four-track release sees prolific guitarist Aidan Baker, best known for his work as half of drone metal duo Nadja, teaming up with fellow ambient rock artist Eric Quach, the man behind the label and musical project Thisquietarmy. The resulting sonic morass is an unlikely but compelling blend of drifting space rock and sheer aural immensity. Despite song titles that suggest a visual mindset, the compositions on A Picture of a Picture are very much explorations of sound for its own sake. "Imagistic Continuity" opens the album with low drones that pile paper-thin harmonic layers one atop the other, creating a subtle blur that's beautifully complex despite its lack of both rhythm and melody; then, just when it seems to sink into a dreamlike softness, the volume increases into a sort of ambient crescendo that's deafening in spite of its seeming stillness. "Loss of Perspective" is the album's most conventionally musical offering, its sound sources most recognizable as guitars with melancholy bass notes picking out a languorous melody beneath airy wailing. "Negative Space" also features fairly recognizable elements with the barest hint of actual plucked guitar strings providing an anchor before myriad effects pedals send them adrift into the ether, borne aloft by spacey twittering and then brought back to earth through industrial-tinged metallic loops, while "Horizon Line" sees Baker and Quach's instruments resembling everything but themselves, their airy hums and windy whirs more like woodwinds than guitars, which makes the barely discernible solo work in the latter half all the more intriguing. While its creators don't exactly break new ground with A Picture of a Picture, it's sure to be appreciated by fans of either artist, and its intensity in places proves that there's a lot more to the ambient scene than mere background music. Instead of creating music to be more or less ignored, Baker and Quach have created music to drown inside.