The Snowbringer Cult

Students of Decay, the Cincinnati-based label that reissued The Dance of the Moon and the Sun as a 6-CD box set, also put together another ambitious compilation in 2008 to introduce listeners to Natural Snow Buildings.  

The Snowbringer Cult was a 2-CD release that included one disc of tracks by TwinSisterMoon and Isengrind, the solo side projects of NSB members Mehdi Ameziane and Solange Gularte, respectively, and one disc of tracks by NSB.  All the tracks were of new, previously unreleased material recorded in October to December of 2007.  The set featured separate cover drawings by Solange for each of the three projects, each depicting an Inuit/Eskimo character standing in the hand of some deity (I guess). In the NSB cover picture, it looks like he's holding up a wheel or a Krispy Kreme donut.   

I'm not posting the TwinSisterMoon and Isengrind tracks here.  It has nothing to do with quality and everything to do with quantity.  As prolific as NSB are and as many recordings as they have released, trying to also follow the equally voluminous output of the two side projects would cause even this quarantine retrospective project to collapse under its own weight.  For better or for worse, we're limiting ourselves to the NSB output only, which in the case of The Snowbringer Cult means we're only listening to Disc 2.

Students of Decay originally released The Snowbringer Cult in a limited edition of 1,000 copies. In 2013, Ba Da Bing! Records re-released the album on both vinyl and CD, and as both the full set of all side projects (4 LPs  or 2 CDs) or just NSB only (2 LPs or 1 CD).  You can purchase whichever version of the album you prefer from Ba Da Bing!'s Bandcamp page.

Along with TDofMatS, The Snowbringer Cult is probably the most accessible album in the NSB catalog.  Largely absent are the dense walls of harsh noise drone that characterize some of their 2008 and later work.  The tracks almost sound as if they were deliberately recorded to give new listeners an overview of the various approaches and strategies employed by the band during their 2006-2007 period.

For some reason, the field recordings and vocal samples of the previous NSB albums are noticeably absent here.  There weren't any on Laurie Bird either, now that I think of it. Although they were a hallmark - a defining characteristic - of earlier NSB recordings, they apparently decided to stop using them sometime in 2007 between TDotMatS and Bird.

The entire NSB disc clocks in at about 80 minutes.  The longest track, They Do Not Come Knocking There Anymore, has 75 seconds of silence about 4½ minutes in, making the rest of the track sound like another composition altogether.  It would be a shame if you thought that was the end of the album and stopped listening though, as the subsequent material contains some of the best and most exhilarating music on the album.  A false ending/long break on the last track of the album is a trick that NSB employs on other albums as well.

Titles and track starting times in the video above are as follows:

1. Resurrect Dead on Planet Six (0:00)
2. Bear Hunting (5:38)
3. Ongon's Rattle (9:39)
4. Inuk's Song (15:29)
5. Snowbringer Cult (23:42)
6. Nieve Sacra (35:33)
7. Gone (38:50)
8. The Desert Has Eyes (42:40)
9. Salt Signs (54:56)
10. They Do Not Come Knocking There Anymore (1:03:17)

This is essential NSB music.  If you had to limit yourself to just two albums by them, I would suggest this one, The Snowbringer Cult, as well as The Dance of the Moon and the Sun.  It's also one of the few NSB albums available for streaming on Spotify.

For those of you keeping score at home, this is now the fifth Natural Snow Buildings release from 2008 that we've covered so far.  First we listened to Sunlit Stone, The Moonraiser and The Sundowner, a 2-CD album and two EPs of previously unreleased material from the  TDotMatS sessions.  Then we listened to the standalone Laurie Bird album, and now this.  But hold on, there's still a lot more 2008 music yet to come.