Nadja & Drakh

DRAKH - Bethlehem

One third of the cult post-industrial Swedish legends MZ.412, one half of the amazing experimental act Beyond Sensory Experience and Nordvargr’s long running loyal partner on classic endeavors – including the abyssal black ambient duo Nordvargr/Drakh. With such high caliber résumé, we are more than honored to present the first DRAKH solo album!

While mostly known for his demonic, truly Swedish guitar interventions on the MZ.412 or N/D pitch black ambiences, Bethlehem finds Jonas Aneheim walking through slow, quasi-harmonic, subtle, yet thick drone fields weaving elaborate and unexpected damaged electronic rhythms and harsh, crackling ambient textures that can become – at the same time – both delicate and haunting, warm and freezing, to finally drown in a sea of reverb, glacial riffing and distortion on his own shadowy interpretation of the city of Bethlehem. Simply perfect.

Masterfully conceived and recorded on the road during his many world travels over the past years – from the US State of Indiana to Asia –, the album successfully narrates unknown angles from these places via ominous sonic vistas and pallets that truly honor the charming aura and tradition of the bleakest Swedish sounds.

Boxset edition - limited to 99 hand-numbered copies.

Presented in our custom 6-panel digisleeve packaging with stunning and desolate photography by Seldon Hunt. Not coincidentally mastered by no one else than Jouni Ollila (aka Ulvtharm, from the MZ.412 fame) at oLLiLaboratories Studios.


Bethlehem is also available as a completely handmade and hand assembled collage-painting-relief book-like boxset housing a long accordion folding insert with 11 attached landscape postcards - based on the album's theme and artwork - displaying stunning abstract watercolor paintings. Just like the box iteself, each one of the pieces is uniquely and individually hand painted (no screens) by Iremir Oscar. Also included is a mini-CDR with four album remixes by some of the closest Drakh's partners in crime - Nordvargr, K. Meizter, Des Esseintes and Cordell Klier - plus the standard edition.

NADJA - Autopergamene

Call it drone-doom-dirge-shoegaze or any other in vogue nomenclature you like. It doesn’t matter. The music is so sublime and superb that we consider a waste of time trying to further categorize the spiraling sounds exhaling from a NADJA album. They are simply the true originators of this bred of blissful, seriously intense and ominously ethereal heavy sounds and one the few acts – along with the genius solo work from the duo’s main composer, Aidan Baker – we are truly obsessed with these days. That said, we are more than glad to welcome the Canadian duo to Essence Music with an immense masterwork!

Autopergamene – a spell or charm wherein you write in blood, on a fragment of skin, what you wish to happen – finds NADJA at the peak of their sonic language of slow-blooming, heavily nuanced ambient guitar constructions and slow motion, lush, epic heaviness.

Divided in three colossal movements, the album starts with the blissful, paced and almost orchestral – much aided by three guest members on strings and Aidan’s trombone, flute and piano – “You Write Your Name in My Skin”, travels through the straight up, super distorted and fuzzed out rumbling sludge riffages of “You Write Your Name in My Head” and its semi-growling processed vocals to finally unfold the nearly half-hour long “You Write My Name in Your Blood” that gracefully starts with delicate, lush acoustic guitars glacially giving birth to an enormous, shimmering and heavily layered symphonic wall to then submerge and bring in a hazy, sparkling and almost passionate, yet twisted, duetto of Aidan-Leah’s male-female voices. Breathtaking.

Boxset edition - limited to 149 hand-numbered copies.


Lavishly assembled in a custom 6-panel digisleeve packaging housing a 6 cards set with beautiful watercolor paintings and artwork by the gifted Portuguese artist L Filipe dos Santos. Superb mastering via James Plotkin.


We proudly present Autopergamene as an ultra elaborate and artistic handmade boxset edition.

On the box itself a number of techniques are used - from collages and stitching to an intrincate ink layering painting process.

Inside you will find the standard 6-panel edition with cards, an alternative DOUBLE CDR set comprising the album (same version/mastering) and a DTS 5.1 version of it - this one mastered/mixed by Anders Peterson and including an exclusive remix - housed in a 6-panel packaging with a striking and utterly different artwork by Iremir Oscar and Uirajara Resende plus an inedit live recording from earlier this year, also on CDR.

Honoring the album's theme - skin and blood -, an individually painted and hand-assembled 16-page book - each page is totally unique - and strange souvenirs, like a pen-like object and a large painted bellyband that holds the whole set.

An unique piece of art carefully thought and executed.


Página web: Essence-Music.com



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