A Citizen's Guide to Getting Into Natural Snow Buildings - Part 6

Continuing our holding pattern here before descending into all of Natural Snow Buildings' 2008 releases.  Shall I Kill My Own Child, I Will Never Sing In The Glory of Satan! is an early track from the duo recorded in September 2000 during their initial post-rock phase.  The song was included on Two Sides of a Horse, a handmade cassette tape released prior to 2003's Ghost Folks. 

Two versions of the cassette exist, one with a printed insert and one with a hand-written Maxell sticker for a cover.  The song titles on the hand-written sticker identify Kill My Own Child as "Version 1," although the printed insert doesn't reference version numbers. However, a slightly different, 16-minute version of the song (Version 2?) was also released as a stand-alone track on cassette tape. Good luck finding that one - according to Discogs, only one or two copies of the cassette are known to exist.

Two Sides of a Horse begins the equine imagery that played a big role in NSB song titles during their post-rock period.  The longest track on Ghost Folks was titled Fallen Lords Were Riding Half Horses, and the stand-out track on The Winter Ray (2004) was Dead Horses. The latter album also included a shorter track titled Dead Horses (By the Sea). However, there were no horse references in the song titles of their 2006 folk-drone masterpiece The Dance of the Moon and the Sun or in subsequent releases (as far as I know).

Self-released and never picked up by a label, Two Sides of a Horse nonetheless provides an interesting glimpse of Natural Snow Buildings' development.  The entire cassette, including Shall I Kill My Own Child, I Will Never Sing In The Glory of Satan!, can be heard here.  It's worth a listen and, at 35 minutes, is one of the shortest entries in the NSB discography.