The Wheel of Sharp Daggers (Natural Snow Buildings)

We're probably due for a reminder about now what it is we're doing here.  During this global pandemic with its stay-at-home, shelter-in-place restrictions, instead of reading that book we've been putting off for years now or binge watching every series on Netflix, we've chosen to use some of the abundance of free time we suddenly have to do a deep dive into the discography and back catalog of an obscure band we otherwise might not have the time and patience to explore.

And what obscure band would be better for this assignment that Natural Snow Buildings?  Chances are you've never heard of them, and if you did, you probably have an interest in drone music and either heard or heard of their cult favorite, The Dance of the Moon and the Sun, and that's about it.  

NSB are not well covered by the usual music news sites.  Pitchfork, for example, has only reviewed one of their albums, the 2015 release Terror's Horns, and that was just a two-paragraph write-up in a Summer 2015 Experimental Records Roundup.  Pitchfork also interviewed them in 2013 along with other "sonic omnivores," including Mary Lattimore and Author & Punisher.  But other than that, nothing, even though NSB have been releasing music for nearly 20 years now.

Yes, they're obscure.  They are also "difficult."  Many of their compositions clock in at close to an hour, albums can consist of two to five or more discs, and they release recordings on a bewildering  schedule - nothing released in 2007, say, followed by no less than a dozen albums in 2008, most released in radically limited numbers (100 or 20, or in the case on the 5-CD box set I Dream of Drone, a mere one) making them difficult to impossible to find.  

They're also difficult to categorize.  They started as a sort of  post-rock ensemble not dissimilar to Godspeed You! Black Emperor, but after three albums in this genre they found their groove, so to speak, in trancelike folk drone.  But just as quickly as they settled on that, they moved on to an industrial, harsh noise drone that can be very challenging to listen to, especially for the full hour length of some of these pieces.

So what we have here is an obscure shape-shifter of a band, the duo, by the way of France's Mehdi Ameziane and Solange Gularte, with seemingly innumerable releases that are difficult to impossible to find.  Only a few of their albums are available on Spotify, and only a few others are on Bandcamp, but fortunately for everyone, IDreamOfNaturalSnow uploaded most of their discography to YouTube.  Your gentle blogger has even uploaded a few individual discs to YouTube himself for your listening enjoyment.  The intrepid fan can eventually track down and download most of their music from the dark web, if one is willing to go there, but trust me, it takes dedication and a willingness to go to some pretty sketchy parts of the internet.

You can also legally purchase a handful of their albums from their Bandcamp page like I also did, and I encourage you to do so if you're a fan if for no other reason than to help support Mehdi and Solange. A few of their albums are also available right now for free download on Bandcamp.

All of which has little to do directly with The Wheel of Sharp Daggers, another of their numerous 2008 releases.  Like Between the Real and the Shadow, the last album we listened to here, the album consists of two long drones.  NSB are still in their noise-drone mode here, but ironically, despite the title, the textures of Sharp Daggers are not nearly as harsh as BtRatS.  In fact, after several of their last releases, Sharp Daggers sounds downright relaxing and pleasant, although it might still come as something of a shock to the uninitiated.   In fact, at times, I'm reminded more of Fripp & Eno's No Pussyfooting experiments than anything else by this release.

The Wheel of Sharp Daggers was originally released as a 60-minute cassette tape in a limited edition of 135 copes. The cassette format limited the contents to two, almost equal-length compositions (Side A and Side B), each just slightly over 30 minutes long.  Track titles and lengths are as follows:

1. The Wheel of Sharp Daggers (32:25)
2. Loss of the Shadow (31:15)

Personally, I find this album one of the more beautiful and pleasing releases of this period.  It's certainly an easier listen than, say, the first half of either The Great Bull God (from Night Coercion Into the Company of Witches) or Ghost Pathway Toward Midgard (from BtRatS), or the 46-minute entirety of Thunderbolt Stones (from the Battle-Gods disc of I Dream of Drone).  Not that there's anything wrong with those tracks, but they can be an ordeal to experience if one is not in the proper frame of mind.  By contrast, most of Sharp Daggers invitingly lures the listener in before allowing the textures to become more complex and dense.