The Sundowner (Natural Snow Buildings)

OMG!  Just when we thought we had a handle on Natural Snow Buildings as this sort of neo-hippie, post-rock/ambient/folk-drone outfit, all of a sudden we hear They Raise The Dead, Don't They? from  The Sundowner EP.  It's as if Fleet Foxes were suddenly transformed into Nine Inch Nails or Ministry.

The rhythm on They Raise The Dead, Don't They? is familiar enough - the drum-circle percussion, the bells and finger symbols, but instead of strummed guitar or a bowed cello, the dominant sound creating the drone is a gloriously loud, squealing wall of low-end electronic feedback and noise.  And it's not just a short bracing dose of dissonance before they get to the main portion of the song or a set-up for a quieter passage to come - the impenetrably dense sonic monolith continues for the full, nearly 12-minute track.  Also, great stereo effects - listen to this on headphones if at all possible.

I'll be honest here - if it weren't for tracks like this, I wouldn't be following Natural Snow Buildings through this pandemic shutdown, and I wouldn't be promoting them and encouraging you to listen as well.  They Raise The Dead, Don't They? is not an "easy" listen, especially the first time through, but it's dark texture and complex layers (it sounds like I'm describing a coffee!) ultimately make it a rewarding experience. 

The Sundowner is one of two 2008 EPs that record label Students of Decay included as bonus discs, along with the 2-CD, 2½-hour long Sunlit Stone album, for their reissue of NSB's The Dance of the Sun and the Moon, making it, in effect, a 6-CD box set.  The music on The Sundowner, like the other bonus CDs, was recorded at the  same time as TDotMatS, and documents some of the band's sonic experiments between 2005 and 2008.  Technically, The Sundowner is disc 4 of the full TDofMatS box set and the companion EP, The Moonraiser, is disc 3,  but I figured we'd listen to The Sundowner first to get ourselves acclimated to the more confrontational side of NSB.

I've talked in the past about the barriers one encounters in exploring NSB's vast discography.  The first barrier to overcome is the sheer number of recordings and the lengths of the albums and many of the songs.   Their dark, spooky, and even occasionally ugly tracks are the second barrier.  But even if you make it through those first two barriers, you're confronted by the wall of sound of They Raise The Dead, Don't They?  You'll feel trapped, like a mosquito trying to bore its way out from inside an iron bell, but keep listening.  Just as one can enjoy metal or industrial music or noise, there are pleasures to be found in these dark, heavy tracks.  It's just a little . . . different.

Here are the song list and starting times for the video above:

1. They Raise the Dead, Don't They? (0:00)

2. Trench (11:52)

3. Dawn Celebration (14:35)

After the pulverizing density of Raise the Dead, you'd think NSB would ease up a little on the second track, but Trench is another musique concrete sound experiment, a sea of electronic haze.  It's like listening to a track underwater or at the bottom of the ocean (the Mariana Trench?).  Dawn Celebration teases a return to "normal" with the tribal percussion and bells, but the 1-2-3-rest, 1-2-3-rest rhythm is soon overpowered by a droning harmonium with heavy reverb for the rest of the piece.

Overall, the structure of the EP resembles a Hellraiser-style horror film with no escape from the hellish realms despite fleeting glimpses of a sliver of hope.  The Sundowner cover art continues the Aztec theme of Sunlit Stone - I believe it's Ozomatli the monkey-god - but I have no idea what the song titles represent, or if they're meant to be representational at all.

I can see why these tracks weren't included on TDotMatS - it's nothing to do with quality, but they would have overpowered the rest of the album, and stood out more than otherwise warranted. TDotMatS would have sounded merely like a couple of intense noise tracks with 2½ hours of pretty "filler" material.

All of a sudden, the NSB discography just got so much more interesting.  Knowing the band has the ability to create these heavy pieces in addition to the prettier sounds of their other works makes all of their subsequent recordings so much more unpredictable.