If the droning sounds were not an indication, then certainly the overall sonic motif is definitely all Aidan Baker, at least his solo piece on this split record with his partner Leah Buckeroff; and while Baker is certainly known for his moody reverb drenched droning that offers sweet sounds and hidden melodies, “Heavy Breathing” actually contains quite a bit of sonic miasma that makes for a challenging listening experience. Heavy on the percussion, particularly his use of cymbals, Aidan Baker lends a cacophonous quality to his contribution that virtually hides the usually pleasant and hypnotic drones to the point of almost completely drowning those more pleasant sounds out of his patiently crafted aural atmosphere.
Leah Buckeroff on the other hand provides that or rather allows that hypnotic quality (that Baker seems intent on disrupting ) to dominate her contribution to this split release, but whereas this duo’s “day job” (Nadja) normally relies on Baker’s reverb drenched guitar drones, Buckeroff uses instrumentation with sounds more along the lines of organs and pump organs to generate her drones for “Breathing Heavy”.
The combined contributions of Buckeroff and Baker yield an interesting result in that Leah’s drones balance out the cymbal heavy cacophony of Mr. Baker to create a much more successful whole than its parts, making the true idea behind this release (a dissection of a piece of music by two artists) a definite success; and ultimately, this duo prove that the whole is often times better than the sum of its parts.
Admittedly, this is not my favorite release that this duo has been involved in together as I found it increasingly difficult to soldier through each session with the Breathing Heavy Breathing; but through the din, there are definitely some interesting sounds that poke above the dense layers and clashing percussion, particularly Leah Buckeroff’s part of this split / collaborative release, that draws me back to the release from time to time.
