Daughter of Darkness V

Before we get into this, let's just remind ourselves what it is we're doing here.  During this global pandemic, when so many of us are either under shelter-in-place orders or are still sheltering in place despite the lifting of restrictions, we were looking for a good, time-consuming project, one we probably wouldn't have undertaken back during the so-called "normal" times.

Exploring the discography of France's Natural Snow Buildings seemed to fit the bill nicely.  They have dozens of recordings (they released 12 in 2008 alone), many of which are two-, three-, or more CDs in length.  Most of their tracks are long drones and it's not uncommon for a piece to exceed 40 minutes in length.  Song lengths seem more constrained by the amount of music that can fit on one side of a cassette tape or on a CD-ROM than anything else. 

And the music itself can be a challenging listen.  They began their career as a sort of guitar-based post-rock duo not dissimilar to Godspeed, but soon found their own voice in a form of raga-influenced folk drone.   But their music got darker and noisier as they progressed, and their interest in horror and the occult led them to eventually produce nearly hour-long monolithic walls of harsh noise and static that are challenging to endure in their entirety.  

The last release we covered here was the box set of five cassette tapes known as Daughter of Darkness.   Its nearly impossible to find copies of the cassette tapes these days (they only released 150 copies), but a CD version was later produced by Ba Da Bing! Records, which included tracks from their follow-up release Daughter of Darkness V.  The DoD recordings are still long, dark and challenging, but incorporate elements of their earlier folk drone and raga along with the newer echo-laden loops of squealing guitar feedback.

The DoD CD box set included the two longest tracks from DoD V - the 37-minute Blood In the Ground Linking Us All and the 32-minute Psychic Navigation.  Not included in the box set, and not available anywhere as far as I know other than the original cassette-tape version of V (only 100 copies, so good luck finding that one!), were the shorter 6½-minute The Damned and the Tortured and the 11:48 Masked Marvel.  The good news is that MP3s of DoD V have surfaced and the recording has been uploaded to YouTube     

DoD V starts with Blood In the Ground Linking Us All, but  we've already heard that on Disc 5 of DoD, so no point in going over that again (not saying it's not worth another listen, I'm just saying even under quarantine, I don't have time to review it again).   You may just want to advance to the 37-minute mark on the video above and listen to The Damned and the Tortured.

The D&T is an unusual track for NSB at this point in their career.  Despite its grim title, the track begins absolutely melodically, shiny and bright, and employs a rhythm sequence unusual for them wherein the cascading drone comes almost to a stop after every 8 bars.  

Masked Marvel begins at around 1:15:00 after Psychic Navigation (one of the stronger tracks on DoD V but also included as Disc 6 of the DoD CD box set). At around 12 minutes or so, Masked Marvel is a relatively short drone by NSB standards, but still manages to present a lot of interesting elements during its length.  An acoustic guitar is prominently featured around the middle of the track, and toward the end it builds up some momentum as it marches toward its conclusion.

After the six full CDs of DoD, listening to only the two shorter tracks on a one-tape release seems like a walk in the park, so why don't we just leave it there for today?  It doesn't have to be all hard work.  Enjoy the music, and if it's safe, consider an actual walk in an actual park.  You deserve it.