[Guest]

Mehdi Ameziane as TwinSisterMoon




One of my favorite music artists. First for being a member of my favorite band, and also for being the folk artist I listen to most. That voice, man. It lacks masculinity yet isn't feminine either. It often achieves this gender neutral zone that comes as close as it gets to what I'd think of as the ideal singing voice.

Mehdi's lyrics also come across so me as smooth and natural to me. Mehdi's folk songs are generally simple-verse, a structure I think I prefer to verse-chorus. There are no logical or forced transitions that I have to adjust my mind to mid-song.


Listen to an 11 minute EP here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUDdQDu9MKU

Here's the latest TwinSisterMoon release: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPAESYaVvTE



Solange Gularte as Isengrind

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My favorite music artist in the world right now. I see Solange as one with an overactive imagination yet reserved enough to control it. There aren't many artists that can take me places the way Solange and Natural Snow Buildings do. There's an almost unconscious element to Solange's music that's hard for me to describe. There are no ear-worms or even much of anything one can call upon when reflecting on an Isengrind album, yet there are melodies and rhythms that exist in most songs. It has taken many listens to personally understand each Isengrind album, some albums I even thought of as unenjoyable at first, yet I wonder what has kept me coming back. There is usually a moment between the tenth and fifteenth listen where things click in a way, and what seemed like just some plain ambient before now becomes a whole world to explore. Solange's albums go very deep for me, even if Solange doesn't consider them to be as… well, deep as Natural Snow Buildings.


Here's the latest Isengrind release: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgflPiWa840



Solange Gularte and Mehdi Ameziane as Natural Snow Buildings

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This band is underground in every sense. They do not consider themselves a part of any specific scene of music, and they do not appear to consider themselves above anyone for it. They are "pretty comfortable in [their] outcast role" yet seem almost inspiringly humble to me. They live small lives, work regular jobs, rarely perform live, release all their albums in limited physical quantity, and they're still gaining recognition. They have even questioned whether they should be making money from their music at all. With that last sentence in mind, since 2006 they have released about 28 albums between these two artists, I'd guess the average length of the albums are between an hour-and-30-minutes to two hours. In my library they have over 50 hours of music total.


Aesthetically, the sounds of Natural Snow Buildings will take you back in time, drag you down to hell, lift you back up, explore supernatural places of earth, through the seas and the mountains and the snow and the forest, all the way outside of earth and throughout space, and take you back home.


I'll make one last note here that while they do take some influences from popular or critically acclaimed artists and bands, even including The Velvet Underground (specifically their third album) and Sonic Youth (specifically the album EVOL), most influences seemed stretched to more obscure places. The cultures of the Inuit, American Indians and South American Indians, Ethiopia, Sudan, Indonesia… and also philosophies and religions and such, like anthropology. This info here is all based on memory and I more advice reading some interviews with the band to better understand their interests and influences, and their general frame of mind.



Daughter of Darkness

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Daughter of Darkness to me is the greatest album in the world, as far as I know. It's the album I have spent the most amount of time listening to. I find every song to be immersive and transportive. It's deep. It's becoming ingrained in me as part of who I am.

It's dark. The universe is mostly dark. It's vast, spacious, and so long, full of environment, feeling. This is humanity's mark. Maybe. What's better than something so natural, improvised, untouched, unaltered…? And there's so much of it!

There will probably something better some day, I don't know. I'm trying to find more words, it's all abstract. I'm also tired. I think I'll go sleep to this album again, if my insomnia keeps me up I'll go for another midnight stroll with this thing playing. Maybe I'll lay down and look at the stars with it… again.



Okay, I'm done. I'm not going to edit anything here except pictures and links, so forgive me if something doesn't make sense.

[Guest]

[Wombi]

[Guest]

[Guest]

I just tried Chutes Too Narrow since my girlfriend loves The Shins and god how I hated it. XD Verse-chorus tends to annoys me. Not being pretentious or anything, I just, like Poe, like it when it flows more naturally and there isn't an abrupt change to get used to. Plus, I really love Daughter of Darkness, or at least the half of it I've heard.

[pearljammer13]

[Guest]

[Saoirse]

CHUTES WINS A NOT-SO-NARROW VICTORY