There’s a fine line between a bearded child and a wolf cub. Blindfold me and present me with this choice and I doubt I would be able to tell you which is which based the spirit energy emitted from their bodies alone. The differences exist, of course, right there in the ears, the teeth, the snout, and the haunches. But with the blindfold on, it becomes much more difficult.
The supremely ungoogleable Aa, known to some speakers of human language as “Big A, Little A,” released an album in early 2014 called VoyAager, having built their reputation over the last five years or so as purveyors of intricate polyrhythms, live electronic manipulation, and ecstatic gang vocals. Centuries from now, whichever sub-clerk of the Eternal Music Library Preservation and Restoration Initiative is in charge of cataloging the music of Aa within the context of the overarching data hive would not be mistaken for filing them somewhere in the same node as Yeasayer, Animal Collective, or Gang Gang Dance. But then again, their presence on the perennially mind-warping roster of Northern Spy might cause that clerk to pause for a moment before making such a judgment. Aa filters their strain of kitchen sink indie/IDM/dance pop through layers of silt, synth fuckery, and structural disfiguration. Their compositions spread drum loops thick over bedrocks of garbled samples and recurring vocalizations. They are not afraid to deviate from the forest path and sink into the brush.
Allow the images of the video for Aa’s song “Koosh” to reach your retinas, and wonder, perhaps, what the hell is going on here. A child gets some insight into Napoleon’s mindset during his exile at the Isle of Elba. It is quite possible that this same child later becomes a wolf, but only after battling his dark self. I, for one, am unsurprised at this chain of events, which we all must endure at some point in the course of this long lifetime.
• Aa: http://www.sleeep.com/aa
• Northern Spy: http://northernspyrecords.com
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