isengrind/twinsistermoon/natural snow buildings: snowbringer cult

Following up on 2012’s fearsome four-LP box set Night Coercion into the Company of Witches, Ba Da Bing presents the second large-scale reissue of another obscurity from French duo Natural Snow Building’s past. Originally released on double-CD by the amazing Students of Decay in 2008, The Snowbringer Cult is a grandiose quadruple-album that combines Mehdi Ameziane’s and Solange Gularte’s solo projects, TwinSisterMoon and Isengrind, on disc one and their collaboration as Natural Snow Buildings on disc two. Ba Da Bing is reissuing the original double-CD, along with vinyl versions for each of the three releases, all with interconnecting artwork. Gularte’s Isengrind centers on hypnotic soundscapes, floating woodwinds and chanted dirges. The airy sounds intermix and collide, sometimes building ominously, sometimes crashing together. It sounds gloriously like an imagined soundtrack to a banned ’70s Italian horror film. Ameziane’s TwinSisterMoon showcases the folk end of his sound. Often graced with his soft countertenor voice, the songs are like a sweet respite amidst the menace of minor keys. Delicate acoustic guitar passages break for shifting drones before leading to ornate instrumentals. The Natural Snow Buildings material on the second disc brings about an alternately luminous and perilous finish to the journey. Here, The Snowbringer Cult reaches climactic points of intensity, following all the tension from disc one with grand payoffs. In all, this expansive work presents the most varied and nuanced sense of what fills the Natural Snow Buildings cosmos, and is one of the greatest projects by an experimental band in recent years.

NSB - The Snowbringer Cult