More often than not, when we come across a collab of some sort we get subpar music, as the featured bands won't push their limits neither will pack off their current best song meddled along with other bands'. It's understandable, but inevitably these kinds of albums seem either an offset of the band's work - this is specially true in splits where, more often than they should, bands resort to making covers of songs they enjoy.
This is not the case with Pyramids with Nadja. I'm not a connoisseur of either band, first off, but the album feels whole, complete. It feels like a piece all throughout, rather than something jambled together for the sake of it.
It's highly experimental ambient music. It grows, too, it's an album that to me resonates with growth. From the soothing vapour-states of Into the Silent Waves - a veritable travel through deep layers of noise, electronic slow rithm and the perfect punch of dissonance - to the explosion of An Angel Was Heard to Cry Over the City of Rome, there's a landscaping involved towards an end. It's a linear album, to be heard from start to finish and to explore again from scratch.
Now the effort behind this album seems to me what holds the greatest responsibility for its success. At every song there's every member from both bands playing - which seems to total six people - plus a bunch of different people weighing in. The evident result is a complex layering of different sounds, different origins; ordered disharmony in some places and perfect harmonic bliss in others.
The power to achieve, through collective work, a coherent album piece is what strikes me as particularly special about this album. Something you should really look into - and cheap to boot. A necessary album for ambient enthusiasts and a "must check" for people searching for an interesting music experience.
This is one of a series of reviews I'm making for albums that I've ordered from Hydra Head Industries a while back. Might as well, right? I'll pick from those I enjoy as I listen through the collection.
