I Dream of Drone (Natural Snow Buildings)

Happy Earth Day!  To recapitulate once again, in 2008 Natural Snow Buildings released a two-CD album (Sunlit Stone), two EPs (The Moonraiser and The Sundowner), a compilation album (The Snowbringer Cult), and two LPs (Laurie Bird and Sung to the North), followed by the three-CD album Night Coercion Into the Company of Witches, their harshest, noisiest offering yet. 

So next, still in the year 2008, they release a five-CD set, I Dream of Drone.  Talk about your limited editions - some of the previous albums were released in editions of only 1,000, 100, or even 22 copies.  Guess how many copies of the 5-CD I Dream of Drone set were released?  Go ahead - guess.

One.  They produced one copy of the box set, which they gave for free to a friend of the band.   That was it, and it's never been reissued.  Any version that you hear is a digital copy of a copy of the original.  It's amazing that people even know the album exists.

Fortunately, two of the five CDs were reissues of other 2008 albums.  Specifically, Disc 1 of I Dream of Drone is the Sung to the North LP, and Disc 2 is the second disc (Gorgons and Mirror-Shield) of Night Coercion and we've already listened to both of them  However, the next two discs (3 and 4) were of original material neither previously nor subsequently released.

Disc 3 is titled Battle-Gods and consists of two long tracks - Thunderbolt Stones and Battle-Gods Worshippers.  Disc 4 in titled Norns and also contains two long tracks - Norns and Radiant Maid of the Underworld.  

Thunderbolt Stones is a 45-minute-plus, almost non-stop attack of harsh static noise in the Night Coercion tradition.  It's not an experience for everyone and you're excused if you jump past it and start listening at the 46:11 mark in the video above.  But for those willing to dive into the deep end of the pool, listening to the track and giving it your full and sustained attention can be an immersive and rewarding experience.  

After the sonic assault of Thunderbolt Stones, the next track, Battle-Gods Worshipers, will sound like a soothing balm for the ears.  It opens with cooing wordless vocals over some gentle percussion and a humming guitar. Over time it builds up additional layers until by the end it has imperceptibly morphed into something else entirely, but rest assured, that "something else" isn't the static harsh noise drone of Thunderbolt Stones.

Norns starts off sounding like an outer-space soundtrack to a science fiction movie or game.  It's the spaciest drone I've heard from NSB yet.  Like Battle-Gods Worshippers, it's extremely soothing and gentle at the start, and then slowly, imperceptibly builds up in complexity.  If you're starting to sense a pattern here - quiet, gentle starts building to more complex conclusions - the final cut, Radiant Maid of the Underworld, will confirm that you're correct.  Like the Battle-Gods track, Radiant Maid starts out with cooing wordless vocals and gentle instrumentation, eventually building up to the most intense level of the album other than Thunderbolt Stones. 

I couldn't find a streaming copy of Discs 3 and 4 of I Dream of Drone anywhere on line.  It's not on Spotify, Bandcamp or Soundcloud, although YouTube has a stream of the entire 5-CD set, all 5½ hours of it, but I see no reason to make you sit through Sung To The North and Disc 2 of Night Coercion over again.  So I went ahead and uploaded Battle-Gods (Disc 3) and Norns (Disc 4) to YouTube myself (see what I do for you?) and posted it up above.  Here are the track titles and starting times:

BATTLE GODS
3-1. Thunderbolt Stones (0:00)
3-2. Battle-Gods Worshippers (46:11)

NORNS
4-1. Norns (1:09:43)
4-2. Radiant Maid of the Underworld (1:40:14)

Overall, the career trajectory of Natural Snow Buildings has been from a post-rock band playing field recordings over repeated guitar figures that build toward their crescendos to the folk drone band of The Dance of the Moon and the Sun, to the harsh noise drone outfit of Night Coercion.  While harsh noise has its merits, it is a relief to once again hear the quieter, gentler sounds of Battle-Gods Worshippers and the two tracks on the Norns disc.

The fifth and final disc of I Dream of Drone is Between the Real and the Shadow, a 2008 LP that was separately released as part of a trilogy of albums.  We'll cover those records in upcoming posts.