It’s been a bitterly cold winter up in New England so far. There are far colder regions, but nonetheless it’s been pretty brutal. On the (more frequent than I’d like to admit) occasions that I step outside for a cigarette it’s always an endurance test. It’s not even an “I feel cold” feeling really; it skips that and goes straight to the “unbearable burning pain” level of temperature recognition. The 20 mph winds this week have added a wind chill below zero. Despite all that, winter is my favorite time of the year.
It has nothing to do with holidays or birthdays (I’m born in July) or anything like that. It’s because even in blistering cold, when those winds are so strong they seem to pin your front door shut, falling snow has a way of making everything seem so beautiful. Watching snow fall is like watching rain in slow motion. It makes me not mind the cold as much; in fact I kind of enjoy it then. Since this isn’t a weather blog, I should get to my point. Natural Snow Buildings is a band that sounds like how a snowstorm looks. Mehdi Ameziane and Solange Gularte’s output as NSB is very prolific, and you may have seen some of their albums covered here before. Honestly, I’ve always found them to be frustratingly hit or miss, but that might just be because I got spoiled by their masterpiece long ago.
The Dance of the Moon and the Sun is a monolithic piece of work. Two discs, 25 tracks, and nearly three hours; it is a lot to take in to say the least, and NSB doesn’t make it easy. They pull you in with the gorgeous brief folk song, “Carved Heart,” and then “Cut Joint and Sinews” follows at over 15 minutes. For the first hour of the album NSB pepper heartbreakingly direct folk songs in between their massive drones in a way that might turn off a lot of listeners.
People who really love TDotMatS often praise it while kind of glossing over this fact. It’s an album that you can get completely lost in, but that fact can also make it an overwhelming listen. NSB create a tremendous tension from the start by slipping moments of clarity like the brief, beautiful “Rain Seranade” or “Breaking Waters” and placing them around the epic 25 minute drone “Felt Presence, Ghostly Humming.” It is an album that challenges you to take it all in one listen, yet it is deeply rewarding when these moments of beauty open up in the dense storm of other tracks.
As you grow used to the structure and pattern of the first disc, NSB completely abandon it on disc two from the moment you hear the uneasy drones of “Tupilak” grow over faint howling wind. On this disc they make a gradual descent to the darkest their music has ever been, and then gently float back to the bright surface. “Wandering Souls” is gentle and vocal driven but there is a darkness to it that was only hinted at before. They maintain that tone on the feverish “Ten Guardian-Spirits Motherfucker,” and while “Gary Webb” teases that the earlier beauty may return it is followed by the Vietnam inspired horror of “Whose Eyes Are Flowers,” where the vocals become frighteningly clear as Gularte delivers the apocalyptic and gory lyrics. Yet in this case it is darkest before the dawn, as NSB begin creating some of their most beautiful songs, both melodic and ambient. “Cursed Bell,” “Search For Me,” and especially “Away, My Ghosts,” bring things full circle to the tracks like “Carved Heart” that began the album. “John Carpenter” is surprisingly unlike its horror movie master namesake, and closer “Remains in the Ditch of the Dead” is a sleepy drone that drifts off to silence midway through before waking up for a brief beautifully sung finale. Though “Ditch” is the final track, everything reaches its big cathartic peak right before on “Tunneling into the Structure until it Falls,” a stunning multi-sectioned song which perfectly marries the two struggling forms throughout the album.
Dense, long, and at times brutally cold and dark The Dance of the Sun and the Moon is an intensely powerful listen. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.
