Natural Snow Buildings - The Dance of the Moon and the Sun (self release, 2006)

1.01		Carved Heart (1:06)
1.02		Cut Joint Sinews & Divided Reincarnation (15:19)
1.03		Interstate Roads (3:15)
1.04		Wisconsin (11:58)
1.05		Rain Serenade (3:21)
1.06		Dance Of The Moon & The Sun (6:26)
1.07		Felt Presence, Ghostly Humming (25:14)
1.08		Breaking Waters (2:46)
1.09		Eu Un Miroir, Obscurement (4:38)
1.10		The Cover-Up (5:09)
2.01		Tupilak (2:12)
2.02		Wandering Souls (3:48)
2.03		A Ten Guardian-Spirits Motherfucker (9:33)
2.04		Mary Brown (1:07)
2.05		Gary Webb (4:56)
2.06		Whose Eyes Are Flowers (5:23)
2.07		The Cursed Bell (2:16)
2.08		All Animals In The Form Of Water (4:39)
2.09		Lie There (3:37)
2.10		John Carpenter (12:06)
2.11		Away, My Ghosts (2:52)
2.12		My Bones Are Yours (4:47)
2.13		Search For Me (4:02)
2.14		Tunneling Into The Structure Until It Falls (7:04)
2.15		Remains In The Ditch Of The Dead (9:50)

French duo Natural Snow Buildings shame the world with this huge endeavor. ‘The Dance of the Moon and the Sun’ is a sleepy giant of a third release: two CDrs, each filled to the 80-minute brim with a complete genre of sounds. NSB runs closely alongside the catalog of the Franco-friendly Constellation and its American lesser-half Kranky, threading simple melodies between rich, swollen instrumentals. Made of Solange and Mehdi, the band enjoys the highest qualities of small collaboration and total mind-meld. Sung in modest, perfect English, the band’s littler songs are straight-forward contractions of the bigger forms which fill the bulk of the discs; nevertheless, the band has a skill for both styles, cramming as much into the velocity of a two-minute track that they do in twenty.

From the top, songs like the unofficial 15-minute opener “Cut joint sinews & divided Reincarnation” spell out the bands thesis “what was ‘Post-Rock’?”; this track in particular playing out like latter Tarentel with persistent, grounded percussion and smothering space-atmosphere. There is an equal distribution of droning raga-sagas and near-traditional downbeat pop songs, with the more condensed tunes acting as segues between moments like the spacious Sigur Ros of “Wisconsin.” Despite the diversity of tone and timbre from track to track, songs of both form notch into a progressive harmony like in the groove of an LP - such as when the title-track emerges from the stellar-feedback of the mounting predecessors, breaking open into a ghost-ship chorus uncannily reminiscent of Constellation’s HRSTA. The epic “Felt presence, ghostly Humming” is a total release in itself, with 25-minutes of black & purple Labradford-like kaleidoscope and slithering chords of electric guitar. Incredibly, the track evolves beyond all precedent, as the glistening washes come into focus with angelic chants and blooms of plucked strings. A handful of voice/acoustic sketches follow like the band resurfacing: a smear of melancholy, rainy-day melodies leading into the second disc.

“Tupilak” is a short yet sinister transition into the graying center of this opus, with lupine howls and winds buzzing in the murk. Windy & Carl are felt in the ancient rite of “Wandering Souls”, and like a global conniption of tribal spirit, the opening Tarentelic dance is reprised in “A ten guardian-spirits motherfucker” with the sequined percussion of bodies stomping the earth, bleeding into golden tones and exotic strings. “The cursed Bell” comes midway this side and rings out with clarity so sharp and a voice so sincere it hurts, following the fantasy which precedes it. “My Bones are yours” alights like a jet-rocket with a wall of glittery guitar that lifts the back of this album up above whatever higher ground it had settled itself to; “Tunneling into the structure until it falls” and “Remains in the Ditch of the Dead” exit this collection on high - despite the titles - disintegrating into the air, ready to reform and recycle into the first disc’s “Carved Heart”.

It is advisable to play the discs back-to-back (to back-to-back), as any seam is likely unintended and would falsely partition these 25 pieces necessarily recorded to two discs. Perhaps the most valuable citation would be last year’s fantastic ‘We Lowered a Microphone into the Ground' by Reigns; still, the breadth of ‘The Dance of the Moon and the Sun’ is so great and the emotion so vast, references inevitably fail to describe the experience. Printed labels on the discs, hand-printed, hand-assembled, hand-drawn covers and bound booklet with lyrics - this is an incredibly crafted work of art holding an even greater body of music. Tremendously recommended. The one pictured is red and I believe all gone, I’ve got a blue one in an edition of 19 and is surely disappeared by this point… there be rumor of a Time-Lag release (re-release?) in the future, so stay awake until that moment. (self-released dbl-CDr, that’s it)

Animal Psi

buy

try cd1
try cd2