Aidan Baker - Lost in the Rat Maze

Aidan Baker, ook bekend via andere projecten zoals Nadja, is een muzikale octopus. De fluitist en gitarist kan een hele resem instrumenten bespelen en dit vooral dankzij zelfstudie. Deze Canadees heeft iets met ambient (en drone). En dat bewijst ook dit album weer. Dit is zo’n album dat je alleen maar goed vindt of slecht. Als je je ogen durft sluiten en klaar bent voor een andere en vooral zachtere wereld is dit zeker een goed album! Een minieme eerdere ervaring met ambient is misschien wel noodzakelijk.
ZILVER (5/7)
Review by: (KK)
Published in Mindview - 2011

Last year's Liminoid/Lifeforms was a solo record only by name. The music itself makes it the most openly collaborative Aidan Baker release I've heard, featuring eight guest musicians and granting them all rather prominent places within the recordings; there's a sense of interaction and interdependence between the collaborators, and for a project generally so reclusive, Liminoid/Lifeforms appears to show Baker stepping quite confidently (and successfully) out into the open. Lost In The Rat Maze he seems to have recoiled into solitude once again, although the album is more direct and rhythm-centric than a large portion of his solo work. Perhaps his experiences with Liminoid/Lifeforms are still fresh.
The title track is one of the album's finest moments, and could be likened to several voices trying to talk over one another rather than a structured and cooperative conversation – drum machine, ambient layering and hushed vocal all interact incidentally, unwavering in the surrounding activity and apparently oblivious to it, yet exquisitely linked by Baker's trademark sense of harmony that arises throughout. It's here that the album title slots in nicely; a daunting mass of separated ideas and thoughts, all tugging the listener in different directions. There are a couple of other tracks that seem to run on this theme – "I Can't Stand", "Feathery Fingers" – and they're all very strong, with Aidan's voice being a particularly captivating element.
At other points, Lost… can be unremarkable, and occasionally even grating (a quality I never usually associate with Aidan's quietly-spoken music). "Corridors of Funk" manages to be both, as well as clocking in unnecessarily at over 12 minutes in length – a wailing, squeaking sound sample is set on an endlessly irritating loop for much of this duration, whilst the rest of the instrumentation trundles at a steady pace without actually covering any ground. Tracks such as "Fanciful Flights" and "Cut Stars" just float by rather nonchalantly, as though the album's theme is being used as an excuse to carelessly send the listener round in circles.
It's a shame, because Lost In The Rat Maze often glimmers with the potential to be something pretty great. It feels unusual to find an Aidan Baker release that engrosses me at some stages and frustrates me at others – usually I'm either entirely on board or completely unable to "click" – but I'd still say that this record is worth the purchase for the times at which Baker really, really excels, even if its snatches of mediocrity won't be getting much of my time.
Review by: Jack Chuter
Published in ATTN:Magazine - 2011

Het voorbije decennium maakte de vaak in Berlijn verblijvende Canadees Aidan Baker genoeg muziek om de gemiddelde liefhebber een paar weken zoet te houden. Je zou dan kunnen gaan denken dat die waanzinnig hoge productiviteit een nefast gevolg heeft voor de kwaliteit van ''s mans werk, maar daar valt weinig van te merken op Lost In The Rat Maze, dat een mooi vervolg breit aan Bakers boeiende ambientverhaal.
Baker is waarschijnlijk het bekendst van zijn dronemetalproject Nadja, dat hij samen met zijn vrouw Leah Buckareff gebruikt om vooral de donkere en heavy kant van het repetitieve spectrum te verkennen. Met die cultband zorgde hij voor een hele resem reguliere en cd-r-releases, al vallen die in het niets bij zijn kolossale solo-oeuvre. Dat is vooral gewijd aan het experimenteren met gitaar- en andere texturen en zoekt het gebied op tussen drone, ambient minimalisme en avant-garde. Het heavy-element is dan zo goed als verdwenen. In het verleden experimenteerde Baker ook met het gesproken woord (naast muzikant is hij trouwens ook auteur van een vijftal boeken), al blijft die stem hier op het achterplan.
De begeleidende boodschap bij dit nieuwe album suggereerde dat de artiest deze keer minder rigide vasthoudt aan de ambient en meer variatie en sterkere dynamiek in zijn plaat zou gestopt hebben, maar dat is nogal relatief. Voor wie vertrouwd is met het oudere materiaal, kan dat zeker het geval zijn. Voor nieuwkomers is dit dan weer ongetwijfeld een plaat die resoluut in ambientwateren verkeert. Het mooie is echter dat Baker heel doordachte dingen weet te doen met (bas)gitaar, piano, fluit, zang, elektronische drums en loops. Alles staat ten dienste van de dosering en de geleidelijke verschuiving. Met kille machinemuziek heeft het weinig uitstaans.
Sommige stukken kunnen sterk van elkaar verschillen en als je op verschillende momenten in de songs inpikt, dan kun je uiteenlopende dingen te horen krijgen, maar die ontwikkeling gebeurt dan wel heel geduldig en natuurlijk. Opener "Prelude" geeft meteen een geslaagd voorbeeld van de klankwereld waar ruis steeds deel van uit lijkt te maken. De galmende gitaar heeft iets van door wind gedragen klokkengelui, terwijl schurende percussie gaandeweg binnensluipt, net als verdwaalde pianonoten en fluitende feeback, die zorgt voor extra dromerigheid. De titeltrack introduceert dan weer een basgedomineerde fond en etherische zang die bijzonder sferisch klinkt.
De meeste songs volgen die stroom/onderstroomwerkwijze. Er zijn er bij die aanvankelijk erg monotoon en abstract klinken en gaandeweg meer kleur en melodie toelaten ("I Can't Stand"), maar net zozeer zijn er stukken die van meet af aan eigenlijk al verder gaan dan de standaardambient of -drone. Zo zorgt Bakers fluitspel (als het dat is, want bij dit soort platen weet je soms niet zeker wat je hoort) in "Fanciful Flights" meteen voor een excentriek randje en creëert de nadrukkelijkere percussie in het langere "Corridors Of Funk" (van een misleidende titel gesproken!) meteen een subtiel opzwepende trance die in het eerste Enotijdperk niet aanwezig was. Dit sluit nauwer aan bij een elektro-akoestische Krautvibe.
Kortom: het is overduidelijk een plaat die ervoor kiest om in de meer etherische ambientcontreien te verblijven, al heeft Bakers spel bij momenten net zo veel te danken aan de nalatenschap van de shoegazegeneratie en andere gitaarexperimentalisten. Zo had "Cut Stars" best een vertraagde, gemanipuleerde versie kunnen zijn van een My Bloody Valentinenummer. De schoonheid is er, maar je moet er een beetje moeite voor doen. Lost In The Rat Maze is introspectief en eerder een kabbelplaat dan een werkstuk met nadrukkelijke pieken en dalen dat meteen laat weten waar het voor staat. Toch is het ook een mooi, organisch klinkend album. Geen hap-slik-weg-brok, maar een genuanceerd hebbeding voor de fijnproevers.
Review by: Guy Peters
Published in Goddeau - 2011

One might think it would be hard for someone as ultra-prolific as Aidan Baker to come up with something new to say. After all, the Canadian musician (currently shuttling between Toronto and Berlin bases) has issued numerous albums as a solo artist and with the groups Nadja, Arc, and Whisper Room, with more than sixty releases listed at Discogs as of this writing (three recent ones include 2010's Liminoid / Lifeforms on Alien8Recordings, and 2009's Dry and Blue Figures on Install and Basses Frequences, respectively). But while many of those releases find him using electric guitar as his primary instrument in contexts that range from experimental doom-and-drone to ambient post-rock, Lost in the Rat Maze opts for a slightly different twist on the Baker sound. This one's an extended dreamscape of sorts though not an entirely ambient one, as beats float through the multi-layered mix alongside hushed voices and assorted other sounds. As such, the album's material inhabits an interzone that draws upon ambient and post-rock elements in equal measure and weaves them into a fifty-four-minute mix. But while the eight parts do form an uninterrupted whole, the parts, while sharing a general level of haziness, nevertheless define themselves as distinct entitites, with each reaching a state of resolution before ceding the spotlight to the next.
In "Prelude," gentle piano playing emerges from a watery fog as a multitude of textures gradually accumulate around it. After three minutes, the piano is barely audible, buried as it is under a thick stream of flikcering, humming sound. The title track perpetuates the hazy dreaminess of the opener, this time adding Baker's soft murmur to the mix. In this second stage of the trip, phasing treatments and simple hi-hat and drum patterns stand out from the smudged whole. The material grows heavier during "Fanciful Flights" as the drums contribute a more forceful attack but the bottom end is leavened by the dense swirl of vocal murmurs and especially the prominent presence of flute playing. As might be expected, "Breakbeat" is comparatively more turbulent in spirit, as drums catapult in multiple directions while an organ drone acts as a stabilizing anchor. That uptempo drive carries over into "Corridors of Funk," which, admittedly, is powered by beats that are more about lockstep forward motion than funk per se. Wrapped in a blanket of haze and flickering voice fragments and textures, "Feathery Fingers" ends the album much as it began. A sense of measured control pervades the project's material such that, even though contrasts emerge from one part to the next, an even flow extends throughout. That detail alone helps make Lost in the Rat Maze one of Baker's most accessible releases and thus an ideal entry point for anyone new to his work.
Published in textura - 2011

Aidan Baker is a prolific man - a very prolific man. Whether churning out ambient soundscapes under his own name, laying down semi-improvised droning doom epics with his main band Nadja or releasing material in collaboration with other like-minded sound artists or other fringe projects, Aidan Baker releases more material in a year than many bands or artists release in their entire careers. Unless you are a Baker completist the question that arises with each new release is 'is this an essential one?'
he same Baker completist might well argue with you that each of the man's solo releases, from the most obscure limited-pressing CDR upwards, is essential, but the truth is that some are certainly more essential than others. Last year's Liminoid / Lifeforms release, for example, showcased Baker pulling out all the stops and seemingly distancing himself from the 'typical ambient / drone' tag: aided by a host of guest musicians Baker added frantic pummelling drumming, operatic vocals and soaring strings to one of 2010's finest (and, unfortunately, most overlooked) releases.
On first listen, Lost in The Rat Maze sounds rather more like 'typical' ambient and your initial impression might be disappointment: the bold and experimental sound of Liminoid / Lifeforms and Baker tearing up genre expectations is gone and instead you are presented with 56 minutes of, on the surface, fairly conventional drone/ambient sound. Each track blends and blurs into its neighbours, creating one coherent and unified sound world, but one that is initially quite ignorable. Many different elements are present: muffled piano chords, occasional sub bass rumbles, percussive snaps and cracks, shoegazey guitar strums, almost-not-there whispered vocals. None of these elements seems to want to stand out from the background though, to impose itself too strongly on the listener: they catch your ear only as they dissolve and melt back into the background.
And yet, somehow, by the third track 'Fanciful Flight', the record has gathered forward momentum and is starting to drag you along with it: almost without realising it the record that minutes before was gently humming to itself in the background has become insistent and unignorable.
One of the most remarkable things about Lost in the Rat Maze is how it manages to be simultaneously calmly meditative and also full of movement. This is not ambient as, for example, Stars of the Lid create it where each note hangs perfectly suspended in mid-air and time seems to stand still. This is the ambient of movement and change: there is always an element gently driving the music forwards, like the sound of continually rippling and splashing water.
One of the landmark achievements and most essential records in Aidan Baker's career is his collaboration with Tim Hecker - Fantasma Parastasie. This record also recalls the movement of water, in particular the great oceanic swell of waves. Lost in the Rat Maze instead recalls a constantly babbling stream, a less ambitious sound world perhaps, but on close listening no less engaging.
Is 'Lost in the Rat Maze' an essential Aidan Baker record? No. It does not have the scope and ambition of some of his other landmark works. It is, however, an extremely immersive and pleasing Aidan Baker record and one that should remind us how essential Aidan Baker himself is.
Review by: Andrew Schagen
Published in Muso's Guide - 2011

Over the last years Aidan Baker has proven to be highly prolific, which resulted in a large catalogue of releases, of which many are solo, but also with his bands Nadja, Arc and Whisper Room. It also brought him some fame, so that his recent releases are on CD and LP only. To be honest, I didn't keep up with all of his releases, only dipping in when it lands on my desk. Consouling, a label from Belgium, tells us that this is an unconventional album in such a way that its not the massive layers of guitar sounds and effects, seemingly waving on end, but in stead its a more compact sound and somewhat shorter pieces, eight in the timespan of fifty some minutes. Baker plays electric & acoustic guitars, electronic drums (provided by Richard Baker), vocals, piano, flute and tapeloops. The music is still highly atmospheric, as one could expect from Baker of course, but somehow it all seems a bit more opener, with 'more air' as it where. Instruments fly in and out, sometimes held together with
The tick of drums, sometimes stuck in a loop of unknown kind, with the guitar(s) neatly tinkling away. Surely still a matter of improvising freely around a small set of themes, but Baker doesn't explore them ad infinitum, and rather just for a few minutes. Nicely spacious head music. A new form of old psychedelic music. Trippy.
Review by: Fdw
Published in Vital Weekly 768 - 2011

Although I've become intimate with at least fifteen of Aidan Baker's releases, I'd be lying if I said I was familiar with a majority of his discography, for as any self-respecting post-rock, sludge doom, ambient fan knows, Baker never sleeps. Not even counting Nadja, ARC or any of his other projects, this one-man production team has released at least 56 solo recordings, including Lost In The Rat Maze. For a newcomer to this music, knowing where to begin becomes more intimidating with every passing month.
Baker's solo work typically evokes a sour dream, a blend of bliss and dour sensibilities. The alien mammoth doom that is Nadja can be detected in his solo work, but the instruments and setting are different. For starters, distortion is usually banished, leaving Baker's guitars and voice to glimmer and rust more gently. On Lost In The Rat Maze, things open with a blurred piano motif, automatically signaling a new twist on expectations. A distant shuffling billows about under the surface, and as controlled feedback from an amped guitar awaits in the threshold, we hear something different than our man's usual reverberated drift.
The synthetic nature of Baker's music has typically kept me at arm's length; I've been unable to embrace it fully. The feeling of wandering hospital hallways at night can only interest me so many times. A new kind of composition starts this album, which is a big plus. The title track returns to classic Baker form, but is tempered pleasantly with a warm hum. Sickly spirits linger beneath this thin sauna of positive ions, but the two dispositions are balanced throughout. Whispering and faint drumming enter the fray in "Fanciful Flights", and when the bass line begins to throb about and flute-like zephyrs cavort on a blanket of stars, the album really hits its stride. "I Can't Stand" is a very up-front piece with post-rock guitars and Baker's vocals shying away in the mix. These pieces behave like fingers on a hand, each different, but naturally working together to weave the tapestry.
The compelling segments seem to drop off in the album's second half. "Breakbeat" is an exception, with its sleepy but scatterbrained rimshots and cymbal crashes weaving amongst the gorgeous, shimmering ambience. Baker's brother Richard is even providing live drums on "Cut Stars", but again, this world is synthetic, and the drums are produced such that they don't sound all that real. Cymbals shudder through filters. Snares sound like they are copied and sent through cyber-membranes. Lost In The Rat Maze begins to sound much like a lot of solo albums from this prolific Canadian, where samples run the risk of fatigue and sometimes are just 'turned off,' hurting their mystique. "Corridors of Funk" has a stiff vocal sample at a few points, and the squeaky wheel sound that repeats ad nauseum leaves a sour taste in the ear. Yes, ears can taste. This track is really the most offending piece of all, and were it left out, a shorter album would have been a much better one.
Despite the rather uninviting image that graces this album's cover (taken by the artist in question), the music has quite a wealth of variety. Piano and flute sounds appear, which give Aidan Baker's typically guitar-centric robo-drifts some expanded topography. Overall, the compositions are different enough from each other as to designate 'songs' as opposed to one long drift (as on albums like Green And Cold or Pendulum), and the album as a whole benefits greatly. The dismal yet gentle palette is peppered with variable drum lines, boyish exhales and indistinguishable lyrics, as well as an overall playfulness. Baker once again sounds like he is in total command of his world, and it's nice to hear so many sides of his work in one place. The album's cohesiveness throughout its experimentation is testament to Baker's ability to maintain a narrative focus on every project.
6,50/10
Review by: Nayt Keane
Published in The Silent Ballet - 2011

There will be some who regard Aidan Baker as not just an important part of post-rock, ambient doom music, but as a sine qua non of that scene, perhaps even the benchmark by which its practitioners should be measured and judged. Such is his perceived importance to many, and the sheer scale of his output (Discogs lists no fewer than 93 solo releases, including this one) makes for an intimidating testament to the breadth and abundance of his creative imagination. Size isn't everything, of course, and it often follows that, the more prolific the artist, the more inconsistent is the quality of their work. Furthermore, it's interesting how the overwhelming amount of music Baker has created through the last decade serves as both an aid and a hindrance when approaching new releases - we know, broadly speaking, what to expect; equally, we never quite know what we're going to hear. There are few artists about which that could be said; Aidan Baker's work is nothing if not enigmatic.
The opening sounds of Lost in the Rat Maze certainly imply something unexpected is afoot. Piano notes appear from within a reverb soup, joined hesitatingly by a distant string presence, revealing itself slowly. The track, "Prelude", is all patience, Baker allowing these two elements to hover, in no hurry to push them on. A third element-more rhythmic but somehow less tangible-is introduced, and now things develop; the strings evolve more forceful harmonics, and the elements swell together. Towards its close, Baker abruptly cancels them all, and it's their echoes that segue into the following, title track.
It's becoming clear that this is music going somewhere, Baker's taking us on a journey, and it's one he's more than prepared to take his time over. Now we hear the first identifiable material from the guitar (deep bass notes), and there are soft hints of a voice. In a similar way to before, a rhythmic element, this time a quiet hi-hat, starts something, and the voice, caught at the limits of audibility, acquires some substance. Another rhythm marks its own pattern at the fringes, suggesting a tempo that may or may not be there, and, having set things in motion, Baker now allows them to drift once again; with the nebulosity of a cloud and the intricacy of an isorhythm, the effect is superbly hypnotic.
Another abrupt cancellation triggers the third track, and by now the excitement at being taken on such an intriguing, captivating journey is considerable. "Fanciful Flights" brings the album's first demonstrative gestures: a more emphatic sense of pulse, the occasional beats become regular, and there's even the makings of a bassline. It's a thrilling next step in what's starting to feel like a real sonic odyssey, Baker keeping the tension strong, retaining the sense that we have somewhere else, somewhere greater, left to go...
The trouble is, this is where things come undone. From the fourth track onwards, Baker's intensity starts to fizzle. The material, rather than seeming to pull us on, begins to lose coherence. Far from being the logical next step, "I Can't Stand" is only superficially different from what came before, and by "Cut Stars", there's a real sense that the game is up; this music is going precisely nowhere. New (pointless) rhythms appear, one drone is replaced with another, there are further vocal whisperings just beyond the cusp of intelligibility.
Baker's stylistic manner is as engaging as ever; this is what we might call a 'viscous' music, the material sounding as though it's been caught in amber that hasn't yet solidified, and that aspect is undeniably impressive. But as the album unfolds, it proves itself to be a structural and compositional disaster, sudden changes confusing things, lending subsequent tracks a clearly unintended incongruity. By "Breakbeat", even the music's discrete elements seem to have stopped having anything to do with each other, merely sounding simultaneously rather than interacting or even blending. And the less said about "Corridors of Funk" the better; the album's longest track is also its most ultra-repetitive and self-indulgent; there's no funk here, and its corridors are very, very long.
One's tempted to reach to the album's title as an explanation for the difficulties presented within its component tracks. Certainly, there's a lot of treading over ground already covered (as one might expect from a maze), but if anything's lost here, it seems to be none other than Aidan Baker himself. Lost in the Rat Maze sets up expectations and then, in the most passive, almost apathetic way imaginable, dashes them. It's a shame to witness Aidan Baker's remarkable ability to weave the most fascinating, absorbing soundscapes fail him. The conclusion, "Feathery Fingers", does at least present itself as a noble valediction, but it can't prevent one wishing Baker had lived up to the high hopes the album's earliest tracks inspired.
Review by: Simon Cummings
Published in Fluid - Radio - 2011

Das neue Jahr ist noch nicht mal einen Monat alt, da steht schon das erste Album von Aidan Baker für 2011 vor der Tür. "Lost In The Rat Maze" heisst der Silberling, der bei den Belgiern von Consouling Sounds im Februar erscheinen wird.
Aidan Baker überrascht hier mit besonders extrovertierten Arrangements und einer Vielfalt an Stimmungen. Außer einigen Drumeinlagen von ARC Bandkollegen Richard Baker hat Aidan Baker mal wieder alles selbst eingespielt. Alles ist in diesem Fall Gitarre, Bass, Flöte, Tasten, Tapeloops und elektronische Drums. Die Aufnahmen zum Album sind zwischen 2006 und 2007 in Toronto entstanden und sind noch aus der Zeit, in der Aidan Baker nicht über den Rechner, sondern analog über einen 4-Spur-Rekorder aufgenommen hat.
Mit "Prelude" holt Aidan Baker den Hörer zurückhaltend ab, um ihn dann beim Titeltrack "Lost In The Rat Maze" ins Ambientdroneshoegazelabyrinth zu schicken. Hier harmonisieren alle Instrumente und elektronischen Beiwerke und legen die Grundlage für die folgenden Songs, die bis zum sechsten Titel namens "Breakbeat" immer ruhiger und atmosphärischer werden. Das 12minütige "Corridors of Funk", das auf elektronischen Beats basierend zu einer Art Beatsog mit Gitarrenuntermalung mutiert, ist der wohl ungewöhnlichste Moment des Albums. Das abschließende "Feathery Fingers" mit geloopten Vocals, aufschimmernden Drumschnipseln und dem typisch bakerschen Gitarrenspiel entlässt den Hörer wieder versöhnlich aus dem Labyrinth.
Ihr könnt euch das Album auf der Broken Spine Bandcamp Seite komplett im Stream anhören und bei Consouling Sounds vorbestellen. Ihr habt die Wahl zwischen Limited Edition im Großformat und Paket mit Limited Edition und normaler Version.
Review by: D.K.
Published in Thepostrock - 2011