The Rock Blogger

Isengrind / TwinSisterMoon / Natural Snow Buildings. The Snowbringer Cult . 2008. 4.5 stars .

This two-disc album comprises three projects of Mehdi Ameziane and Solange Gularte, the French drone/folk artists that brought us Natural Snow Buildings. These incredibly lengthy movements share the same hazy, free-form structure as their main project, with some tribal percussion and drawn-out woodwind passages rounding out the Isengrind tracks. Wordless vocals move ethereally over the sparse instrumentation, as if caught in a deep, psychedelic trance. The entire affair sounds like a sample from some shamanic ritual, with each coo, chant and chorus exalting the slow, meticulous consumption of Psilocybin.

The TwinSisterMoon pieces follow the same ritualistic path, with a greater focus on sustaining a fluid, relaxing drone, as each layer of instrumentation bleeds in together. The vocals become more gentle and soothing, reminiscent of Vashti Bunyan’s sleepy style. The music moves like a dream, transient and indefinite, as the dense wall of sound oscillates into pure ambiance.

The two projects then converge into Natural Snow Buildings, the album’s concluding side. The drones here are flatter and more stretched out, sprawled out like some distant alien landscape. The atmosphere here is harsh, icy and strange, with haunting pulses of noise looming somewhere on the horizon. Percussion rears its head again towards the end, evoking the tribal circles of the north, extended tributes to the Aurora Borealis.

While the sounds on this collection can be bizarre and unsettling, they also carry a deep-seated wonder, an appeal to the frozen abyss. It’s daunting length, experimentation and meditative effects make this a challenging, and certainly rewarding work. While NSB’s Daughter of Darkness overshadows this effort in terms of scope and consistency, this three-way split is still notable for its eclecticism and Inuit lore. A gem for wanderers.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 11th, 2009 at 1:49 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.