This album bears the Surprise of the Month tag, because I am surprised I was able to embrace Nadja’s ambient drone metal to the degree that I did. I am sure that two Canadians behind Nadja, Aidan Baker and Leah Buckareff, will not mind if my interpretation of Bodycage differs from what was moving through their souls when the album was created. Hey, this is an experimental music, everybody is allowed his/her own analysis.

Bodycage is dedicated to a rare congenital disease called Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva. I hope none of the band members, or their loved ones, are suffering from it. For that matter I hope no one would ever be affected, as it sounds horrible. With this ailment the body goes through inordinate amount of calcification, practically creating more bones where they are not necessary, building up an extra skeleton within a human being. I can only imagine the pain, the feeling of body slowly stiffening, as in vivo permanent rigor mortis.

Bodycage is broken down in three lengthy tracks with two more unlisted tracks present on the CD. The whole of Bodycage moves at superslow tempo, the riffs coming at you at snail-crawl pace, the sound never leaving the dreamy spacey realm. The opener Clinodactyl takes literally minutes to come on, but when it does, I was experiencing the feeling of warmth, down to funereal satisfaction, washing over my mind. Nadja’s drone in Clinodactyl floats through with the electric peacefulness on solar wind power, its percussion being the electric shock touches. There is even a melodic progression if you are patient and let it come to you. Clinodactyl is the quiet before the storm; one out of balance move threatening to destroy this electric paradise and throw it in the abyss. Clinodactyl is the state of body and mind not yet knowing that it will be stricken down with the horrific disease.

As peaceful, but edgy, as Clinodactyl is, Autosomal is full of the foreboding sense. Perhaps it is the use of lower electric fuzz frequencies, or tribal drumming (this is all machine I understand), but Autosomal is taking a listener over the breaking point, from where there is no return. Speaking of the disease, maybe it is the realization that the end is inevitable.

If Ossification, the third track, is supposed to symbolize the passing, then I could not imagine it being any more peaceful. This track is plain dissolution into nothingness, something ethereal (soul??) floating away on the upward air stream. There are no shrieks, hysteria, or even sudden unexpected moves.

I did not feel that the non-listed tracks added much to the album. It seemed very logical to end the music where Ossification ended, but Blank does go through some bee buzz onto another foreboding sense of apocalyspse, and Sandskin is another “typical” Nadja ambient drone track.

Bodycage worked great for me in two situations – after a long arduous work week when I needed to relax, and after an in-family fight where you know there was nobody who was right and the tempers need to cool.