Beyond The Veil

Of the many odd and unexplainable aspects of the French folk-drone duo Natural Snow Buildings, one we haven't talked about is their inclination toward the English language.

Sure, I understand that all or at least most Europeans are at least bilingual, if not tri- or quad-lingual, and that English is not only effectively the universal language but also the predominant language in pop and rock music.

But Natural Snow Buildings, despite being French, title all of their albums with English names, give all of their tracks English names, wrote all their lyrics in English, and use exclusively English-language samples in the field recordings incorporated in their early work.  Based on accent, many of those recordings are from the American South and Appalachia.  Their album Shadow Kingdom even included a 16-page comic book written entirely in English.  If you didn't know they were French, you'd be forgiven for thinking them English or American (or Canadian or Australian, I guess).  Even the Beatles sang more lyrics in French than NSB.

A reasonable theory is that although they live in France, Brittany in the northern part of France at that, most of their audience and most of their shows are in England.  A reasonable theory, but also completely wrong.  First, NSB don't have an audience (just kidding, but it is a small if devoted audience).  But second, they didn't tour England until 2012, which is the year we are now up to in our covid-19 quarantine retrospective review.

For their first-ever tour of England, NSB produced a limited-release album, Beyond the Veil.  Only 300 copies were printed, and they were sold exclusively at the merch tables on their tour dates. Generally-speaking, one can call Beyond The Veil a folk-drone album, but more than that it's a nice sampler of the various approaches to folk-drone employed during their last several albums, including space-drone and ambient-drone, but without the nails-on-a -chalkboard noise drone of some of their 2008 albums.  At this point in their history (2012), NSB are clearly now in the fourth phase of their artistic trajectory following their post-rock phase (2001-2004), their folk-drone phase (2005-2007), and their noise-drone phase (2008-2009).  For the record, this is my favorite phase (although 2006's TDotMatS is still my favorite album of theirs).

Here's the track list:

1. Invoke / Summon (9:24)
2. Starless (9:41)
3. Bone Diadem (6:44)
4. Spells (5:45)
5. Beyond The Veil (9:52)
6. The Sixth, The Hand (8:51)
7. A Prophecy Fulfilled (8:00)
8. Children Of God (8:04)