Altered Zones

By Ian Pearson

When TwinSisterMoon's Mehdi Ameziane divulges the parallels between his recently reissued Then Fell the Ashes... (2010) album and post-apocalyptic literature like Cormac McCarthy's The Road, I suspect that it is partly a study of eschatology, or the end of life as it is now. Conceived as a post-scriptum to the mourning of his father's death, Ameziane's fourth solo outing is, in a sense, its own fiction-- a series of vignettes one could "read in any order but that will have always the same signification," he explained to me over email. With a sound palette ranging from electro-acoustic drone to lo-fi guitar folk, he explores the idea of "maintaining the continuity of civilization through memory and transmission," of transitioning into a new era, with its different ways of living, thinking, and being. I believe one way of reading Then Fell The Ashes... is as a story of destruction and creation, death and (re)birth-- not only within the worlds we inhabit, but in the relationships that take root within us.

Opener "Black Nebulae" brings us into a scorched landscape of harsh drones, evolving with the precision of an orchestrated melody. Catharsis oozes from every dense layer of worldly yet whirring instrumentation, ceremonious and bloodcurdling. This should be a familiar scenario for followers of the French musician's primary musical outlet, Natural Snow Buildings (with Solange Gularte). This time around, however, the foreboding mood lifts quickly. After only five-and-a-half minutes, the noise gives way to a pair of breathy strum-and-hum melodies, recalling the warmth and safety of a campfire, or a nostalgic refuge in folkloric americana. Mehdi's curious mezzo-soprano, brought to the front on tracks like "Ghost That Was Your Life" and "Trailer," cradles us into a dreamlike state before sending us back out into the great unknown.

Ameziane's knack for stirring up a wide variety of emotions over the course of a single piece of music comes to the fore on the album's two longest tracks: "The Big Sand," which reaches well over the 10-minute mark, and the 25-minute title opus, which takes up an entire side of wax on the LP version. Both open with stretches of cacophonous noise and psychedelic torment. But while the former evolves into an ecstasy of choral rapture, the latter transforms into a melancholic ode to loss, culminating in a structured hymnal refrain, with the lyric taking central focus. It's this juxtaposition of textural devastation and melodic reprieve that makes Then Fell the Ashes... such a purposeful piece of storytelling. And in an age of economic collapse and environmental devastation, the tale of surving past end time-- and on into infinity-- is one to keep close to heart. Perhaps it is Cormac McCarthy who understands TwinSisterMoon best, for he seems to have anticipated it in The Road: "A formless music for the age to come. Or perhaps the last music on earth called up from out of the ashes of its ruin."

TwinSisterMoon: Then Fell The Ashes...

Then Fell The Ashes... reissue is out now on Primary Numbers, and available from Forced Exposure (LP format) and Aquarius (CD)

Speaking of his solo project TwinSisterMoon, Natural Snow Buildings' Mehdi Ameziane admits that his songs are "captured on a one take/good take basis; almost unfinished in a sense, like a sketch." "Trailer," a track from his recently reissued Then Fell The Ashes... album, feels more like a wholly vivid snapshot of an incomplete memory-- one of being rocked to sleep with a lullaby cassette in the tape decks, for instance, or simply of a time when your soul felt 100% insulated from even the slightest twinge of existential doubt. Next to the album's mile-long vistas of gristled ambience, this half-hummed folk tune is about as spine-tingling as the sound of a music box at the beginning of a horror film-- and as comforting as a lost tape of Vashti Bunyan on a lo-fi tip. --Emilie Friedlander, Visitation Rites

MP3: TwinSisterMoon: "Trailer"

Then Fell The Ashes... reissue is out now on Primary Numbers and available from Forced Exposure (LP format) and Aquarius (CD)

--Previously:

MP3: TwinSisterMoon: "Desert Prophecy"

TwinSisterMoon is Mehdi Ameziane, one half of the hallowed French duo Natural Snow Buildings. Birthed back in 2007 with the self-released CD-R When The Stars Glide Through Solid, Medhi has since put out a string of limited releases and their subsequent reissues, garnering a devoted following of folk-drone enthusiasts and rarity collectors alike. Last year's Then Fell The Ashes... album somehow slipped under our radar, but Primary Numbers has re-released it with updated versions of the songs and a bonus track, and we're all-ears. "Desert Prophecy" is a work of characteristically bleak folk craftsmanship that invokes the twists and turns of a heart on a threadbare sleeve. --Ian Pearson, Altered Zones

MP3: TwinSisterMoon: "Desert Prophecy"

You can pick up Then Fell The Ashes... from Forced Exposure (LP format) and Aquarius (CD)