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Mehdi Ameziane

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TwinSisterMoon, “Bogyrealm Vessels” (Handmade Birds, 2012)

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The trajectory of Natural Snow Buildings continues to amaze me with each new album, as Mehdi and Solange seem to grow more and more inventive and skilled at composition every single time they surface. Mehdi’s last solo effort, the drone-heavy Then Fell the Ashes… was one of favorite albums of 2011, but Bogyrealm Vessels is a completely different (but no less wonderful) animal: an enigmatic and weirdly beautiful song-based concept album involving a space invasion, schoolgirls, and giant plants.

One of the more endearing aspects of Natural Snow Buildings is immediately evident here: while this is musically a Mehdi Ameziane solo album, Solange Gularte’s cover art is absolutely crucial. In fact, what little I can piece together about the album’s concept is taken almost entirely from the accompanying art (though the evocative song titles help a bit too). I wholeheartedly appreciate the cryptic nature of the Bogyrealm Vessels narrative though, as it is definitely an intriguing challenge to try to figure what it all means. Also, I generally hate rock operas and concept albums, so I would probably have flung Bogyrealm across the room if Mehdi had done something as uncharacteristically ham-fisted as spelling everything out with clumsily expository lyrics. I am a huge fan of vague, unexplained menace though, so this approach works just fine for me.

Curiously, most of that sense of menace stems from the album’s elusive narrative, as the actual music is much less heavy and dark than I historically expect from Twinsistermoon. Also, when Mehdi sings, the lyrics that I can make out would not seem disturbing at all if decontextualized from the art and song titles. That lighter touch works beautifully here, as Bogyrealm Vessels has the gently hallucinatory feel of a deeply strange, warm, and beautiful dream that seems fragile enough to dissipate at any moment. That perfect surreal reverie is threatened slightly by the brief, but relatively straightforward, acoustic balladry of “Bogyrealm” and a few other moments, but Mehdi is otherwise infallible in keeping me fully immersed in his alternately uneasy and blissful alternate world.

Roughly half of the album is still devoted to drone pieces, but they are uncharacteristically short and shimmering, acting mostly as pleasant interludes between the folkier “songs.” The sole significant exception is the grindingly heavy “Interferences From Extincts,” which favorably recalls some of Mehdi’s more crushing work from the past. All of the drone pieces on Bogyrealm Vessels are quite good despite their brevity. That came as no surprise to me, as Mehdi has long ago proven himself to be a master of the form. However, I was caught off-guard by how much I loved some of the vocal pieces. While Mehdi’s singing does not depart much from the eerie child-like dirges of past efforts, his lazily cascading and off-kilter guitar playing on pieces like “In Deep Waters” and “Prisms” is absolutely ideal for the album’s dreamy, not-quite-there fantasia.

This is a very unusual effort within the Twinsistermoon oeuvre due to its lightness and relative insubstantiality, but I see both of those traits as definite assets. This is a great album, all the more so because Mehdi avoids both repeating his previous successes or plunging too deeply into the sadness that pervades some of his earlier work. As aforementioned, a few of the songs here do not quite sustain Bogyrealm Vessels’ lysergic trance as well as they could have, but they are easily eclipsed and forgotten by the album’s end. It is funny to think that an album this deeply weird can be considered “accessible,” but it feels like it is…comparatively, anyway. While I personally prefer some of Mehdi’s heavier, long-form drone pieces to any of the individual pieces here, this is a strong candidate for Twinsistermoon’s finest complete work. If it isn’t, it would at least score the consolation prize for the most endlessly listenable.

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TwinSisterMoon, “When Stars Glide Through Solid” (Blackest Rainbow, 2011)

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This is the long-awaited reissue of Mehdi Ameziane’s incredibly scarce 2007 solo debut, which was previously only available as a self-released CDr edition of just 30. Naturally, both Twinsistermoon and Natural Snow Buildings have evolved and blurred together quite a bit over the last four years, but at the time of its original release, these raw, fragile, and eerie pieces were a dramatic departure from the less distinctive drone/post-rock that Mehdi and Solange Gularte had been releasing. While I definitely believe that Mehdi’s work has only become stronger over the ensuing years, this remains a unique and mesmerizing highlight in his voluminous discography.

I have no idea what triggered it, but the years 2006 and 2007 were an incredibly fertile creative period for Natural Snow Buildings.  For one, they released a brilliant double album that many still consider to be their
greatest work, The Dance of The Moon and The Sun. Then, both Mehdi and Solange released stunning and wildly different solo albums (Solange’s being Isengrind’s Golestan). There were always unusual threads running through NSB’s sound, but up until that point, it was very easy to see close similarities to other artists like Tarentel, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Stars of the Lid, and Windy and Carl. Both the hallucinatory pagan drone of Golestan and the haunting childlike folk of When Stars Glide Though Solid had no such clear
reference points or precedents though: from 2007 onward, no one else sounded like Natural Snow Buildings.

Even since then, the “Natural Snow Buildings aesthetic” has seemed to be largely based upon perfecting and blending those two disparate threads (and they have been doing it extremely successfully). It was a career-defining period. The simplest way to describe Mehdi’s sound for much of When Stars Glide Through Solid is “field recordings of a choir of undead children singing around a campfire,” a rather singular vision best expressed in pieces like “Ojibway Ghost Trail Song” and “Momuzo.” Ameziane covers a lot of other stylistic territory as well, but tape hiss, sparse acoustic guitar accompaniment, soft childlike/feminine vocals, and an otherwordly sense of temporal dislocation are fairly omnipresent throughout. While a number of the vocal pieces are quite strong (“To Breathe Underwater,” in particular), my favorite moments tend to be the more abstract ones.

The opening “I Wish I Could Drown The World In Reverberation,” for example, beautifully interweaves shimmering layers of shoe-gazing guitar, spectral wordless vocals, and quasi-tribal percussion into something
that easily could been a highlight on The Dance of The Moon And The Sun. The brilliant title piece also recalls Ameziane’s work with Gularte, but goes even further: it seems far more in line with future masterpieces like Waves of the Random Sea…or something like a boisterous funeral parade for an imagined culture from several hundred years in the past. 

I suspect that this album would have completely floored me if I had heard it when it was originally released, as I am quite used to Mehdi’s strain of ghostly folk at this stage.  I miss having fresh ears. Also, I can’t help but compare everything he releases to the amazing …And Then Feel The Ashes. Despite that daunting mixture of familiarity and unfairly high expectation, however, I still managed to find quite a lot to love here. This isn’t the best Twinsistermoon album to start with, due to its somewhat primitive recording quality, but the content is absolutely essential for those already converted (particularly those who prefer Mehdi’s more song-like side).

(Note: The vinyl version of this reissue includes one full side of bonus material, much of which is as good as the actual album. Also, Solange’s new artwork for the inner gatefold is among her best.)

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TwinSisterMoon, “Then Fell the Ashes…” (Blackest Rainbow, 2010)

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With a few exceptions, most of Mehdi Ameziane’s recording career can be broken down into two simple categories: “great albums” and “albums that would have been great if they had been pared down a bit.” Then Fell the Ashes… happily falls quite squarely in the former category. There is definitely some evidence here that Mehdi is continuing to evolve and improve, but the more important thing is that this is one of the most perfect distillations of everything that makes TwinSisterMoon so unique and wonderful. This is one of my favorite albums of 2010.

I have always preferred the darkly psychedelic drone side of Ameziane’s work to his folkier pieces, so I was quite pleased to discover that the bulk of Then Fell the Ashes… is devoted to his more quasi-ritualistic, otherworldly, and abstract leanings. In fact, the entire second side of the record is filled by one such work, the overwhelmingly beautiful 25-minute title piece. 

It is hard to make me rabidly enthusiastic about drone music (editor’s note: that is no longer true), but “Then Fell the Ashes…” is just staggeringly perfect in so many ways: there is a head-spinning amount of textural activity occurring, it is hugely powerful, it’s filled with great instrumental passages, and it all seamlessly flows from crushingly dense to ghostly to fragilely melancholy without any lapses in majesty or vitality. The sad, oddly-timed cascade of guitar and piano notes near the middle stood out as particularly sublime, but I was also very impressed with how it unexpectedly evolved into an actual song at the end, like the closing credit music of an especially hallucinatory nightmare. I’m a big fan of unconventional song structures that aren’t clumsy or jarring.

While “Then Fell the Ashes…” is certainly pretty stunning from a compositional standpoint, I was equally struck by Mehdi’s skill as a producer and arranger. He weaves together an absurd number of tracks and instruments here, all of which are shimmering, flanging, rattling, swelling, or fading in some way, yet it never sounds cluttered or muddy, just gritty, psychotropic, and enveloping. Making drone music sound visceral, organic, and detached from our time is an art form all its own: I can’t fathom how long it must have have taken him to record and mix such a piece.

The six pieces on the first side maintain a similar level of excellence. My favorites are (predictably) the more drone-themed ones, particularly the massive “Black Nebulae,” which almost seems to breathe in an ominously Lovecraftian way. “The Big Sand” is equally wonderful, though markedly less unsettling. In fact, the coda is almost pastoral, as the howling pagan pipes give way to quivering organs (or treated flutes), field recordings of water and birds, and an elegantly melodic acoustic guitar motif.

The four brief “songs” are pleasant enough in a “tape hiss-damaged recording of Vashti Bunyan” kind of way, but they don’t pack quite the wallop of their lengthier, more maximalist counterparts. I’m glad they are included though; as they’re essential from a sequencing perspective: 18 solid minutes of heavy psychedelic drone would be exhausting. The occasional oases of space and intimacy go a long way towards heightening the impact of the album’s denser pieces. Also, I am pleased that the neo-folk songs are less oppressively sad than usual (“Trailer” could actually be described unironically as catchy). I suspect Mehdi is making an effort to broaden to expand his mood palette a bit and it seems to be an experiment that is working very well so far.

I expect to like every TwinSisterMoon release at this point, but Then Fell the Ashes… exceeded my expectations in every way: it sounds awesome, it doesn’t resemble anyone else, the melodies are great, the heavy parts are elephantine, and it all flows beautifully. Also, it seems like Mehdi is becoming more skilled at finding the ideal lengths for his songs on a case-by-case basis. This is a near-flawless and remarkably listenable album. Anyone curious about checking out TwinSisterMoon or Natural Snow Buildings would be wise to start here.

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TwinSisterMoon, “The Hollow Mountain” (Blackest Rainbow/Dull Knife, 2009)

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This brilliant and mind-bending solo opus by Natural Snow Buildings’ Mehdi Ameziane was originally issued as an LP by Dull Knife in 2009 and sold out within hours. Fortunately, it has now been reissued and remastered and augmented with a massive amount of bonus material for those of us that
weren’t fast or well-informed enough to catch it the first time around.

There are a lot of unusual things about Natural Snow Buildings, but the most notable (to me anyway) is how utterly detached they seem to be from the mundane and often petty world that the rest of us are stuck living in (both musically and otherwise). Instead, Solange Gularte and Mehdi Ameziane seem to inhabit a darkly magical and Edward Gorey-esque shadow reality. Also, they seem guileless and genuine in a way that is wholly foreign to modern human nature. Those are admittedly odd statements to make about a band, but Solange and Mehdi’s recorded output provides excellent corroborating evidence. The duo are certainly prolific, but each new album is released without fanfare, as though they had simply accumulated enough otherwordly material for yet another dispatch from their insular, self-contained universe. 

More significantly, though the duo tend to put a great deal of effort into beautiful art and packaging, they release everything in such limited quantities that it seems that they have a total indifference to any of the external rewards that might be reaped from producing great work. Or they’ll release a double-album as a free download (through some third party, of course). The simple act of creation seems to be the entire point and whether the rest of the world notices or gets a chance to hear it is largely irrelevant.

Another odd thing is that Mehdi’s vocals are quite feminine- in fact, critics often mistake him for a woman.More specifically, he sounds like a profoundly sad and somewhat ghostly Vashti Bunyan. The actual music, on the other hand, sounds exactly like the sort of album Shirley Collins might have made (but regrettably didn’t) after teaming up with the Current 93 milieu. 

Some songs, like the simple and sparse acoustic ballad “Bride of the Spirits,” sound a lot like traditional Celtic folk (until the “Come to me, my only child- I’ll just eat your flesh” line, anyway). More often, however, the songs seem to come from a much more exotic time and place, such as the pagan drone of “Druids.” While this mystique and timelessness is certainly deliberate and well-earned, some of the credit must be given to Mehdi’s exclusive use of instruments that cannot be associated with a fixed point in time, such as flutes, tampura, shruti boxes, and tambourines.

Despite the clear allusions to psych folk, traditional music, and modern drone/noise strewn all over the album, The Hollow Mountain still sounds like something entirely fresh and unique. Ameziane weaves all of his influences together in an unpredictable, ingeniously arranged, and complicated way, but makes it all sound like a seamlessly and organically unfolding dream. This is the kind of music that unicorns would make (if they had good taste): melancholy quasi-medieval ballads warp into field recordings of babbling brooks, clanging cathedral bells, or a chorus of happily chirping birds just as easily as they turn into evil-sounding drones or heavenly psychedelic fugues. The tone is similarly mercurial, as Mehdi’s sweetly melodic songs have a tendency to become menacing, ritualistic, or pastorally beautiful with little warning.It never seems jarring or clumsy either, although Ameziane’s vocals can sometimes be oppressively sad when I am in the wrong mood.

I have not heard the original LP version of this album, so I cannot say how much effect Ben Nash’s remastering efforts have had on it. It’s a pretty lo-fi album, but not in a bad way-—more in an immediate and raw way, but with a thin patina of hiss and distortion that suggests that it may have been recorded with just a microphone and an 8-track. Amusingly, the “bonus track” included here is almost 45 minutes long, making it essentially a “bonus album.” Disorientingly, it is just as good as the main album and could have easily been released separately, but I’m sure Mehdi forgot about it as soon as it was done and had already moved onto something else. Regardless, more TwinSisterMoon is always a good idea, as Mehdi’s artistry is best appreciated as complete immersion.

I haven’t tracked down enough of the voluminous Isengrind/Twinsistermoon/Natural Snow Buildings ouevre to effectively contextualize The Hollow Mountain within a hierarchy of essentialness (they’ve been working in extreme obscurity for 13 years now), but I can conclusively state that it is a beautiful and stunning album and that it is actually still available (a very rare occurrence indeed). Also, despite the fact that it has been retooled slightly for mass consumption, it still retains some of the duo’s characteristically ambitious packaging: the disc is (egolessly) enclosed in a booklet of Solange’s creepily surreal woodcut-inspired art.