Daughter of Darkness - Disc 2

I forgot to mention last time (how rude of me!) that another unique attribute of Natural Snow Building's 2009 album, Daughter of Darkness, is that you can actually purchase this one.  The original, limited-edition cassette-tape version is no longer available, but Discogs lists several vendors for both the CD and vinyl box sets (I suggest carefully checking into availability before buying) with costs ranging from $35 to $200.   San Francisco's Midheaven Records is selling the CD and vinyl sets ($29 and $100, respectively), as well as both FLAC and MP3 downloads ($19.99 and $17.99).  Amazon, naturally, sells everything and are offering the album in MP3 format for $18.98. Personally, I would save a dollar and buy it from Midheaven before I gave more business to Jeff Bezos.

Of course, it's also available for streaming on Spotify and YouTube. 

The track list and lengths for CD-2 are shown in the Spotify widget above.  In the original, cassette-tape version, Carnal Flowers appears at the end of Tape 1 and the track list for Tape 2 is as follows:

1. Her Face Is Not Her Real Face (43:30)
2. Body Double (12:19)
3. Slaves For The After Life (26:13)
4. The Source (4:23)

Slaves for the After Life was moved to Disc 4 of the Spotify/CD version, so we'll get to that later.  If you're curious, in the vinyl version, Her Face Is Not Her Real Face takes up the entirety of the third of the eight 12-inch LPs and is split into two parts, one on each side.  Carnal Flowers, Body Double, and The Source each share half a side with parts of longer tracks on LPs Two, Four and Five. 

Carnal Flowers is a melodic march, a tuneful, lo-fi introduction to Disc 2.  It would make a great soundtrack to a vampire cult movie - I can almost visualize a long panning shot accompanying this track.  

Her Face Is Not Her Real Face is the main event here, clocking in at 46:32 (three minutes longer than the cassette version!).  The cinematic vibe of Carnal Flowers continues here with some opening flamenco-style guitar strumming and lovely cooing vocals, but soon the undertones become more pronounced and after about 10 minutes come to dominate the sound in a pattern familiar to those who've listened to NSB's previous work.  Eventually, though, things calm back down and all the threads and stems of the sound resolve themselves into a single tone beneath the voice and echoes of the introductory flamenco guitar.  By the half-way point at around 23 minutes, it all gets very quiet indeed, occasionally interrupted by short bursts of random noise effects and eventually a minimal drum beat.  The drone continues along in this trance-like vein and sounds like some occult ceremonial service complete with blood sacrifice and enchanted followers.  It's simultaneously beautiful and spooky as it builds toward its eventual crescendo and resolution.  What a trip!

The title of Body Double seems to continue the theme of the previous title.  After the long, dark  procession of Her Face, Body Double sounds like sunlight dancing on a mountain stream as it meanders along, content in and of itself.  

The Source didn't originally follow Body Double in the cassette version, but is sonically very similar to Body Double and fits in quite well.  After the previous, epic-length tracks, it seems to flash right by at "only" five minutes, and the effect is enhanced as the last 30 seconds of the track are silence.

This disc is really like a movie for the ears - it's hard not to conjure visions of Peter Cushing and Ingrid Pitt in some imaginary Hammer Film as you're listening to this music.