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Rating: A colossal megalithic monument "Shadow Kingdom", the latest album by Natural Snow Buildings, a French duo composed of Mehdi Ameziane and Solange Gularte, also known artistically as Isengrind.
A double album, finally released not in limited edition like their previous works, which lasts about 2 and a half hours, can only be defined as such. Prolix and boring? Pompous? Not at all, for me. It may seem strange because in this fascinating and impressive work there is a variety of melodies colored with different shades. It's a painting made of ethereal landscapes, epic suites that flow smoothly like steep waterfalls of fresh clear water and long drone symphonies with robust acoustic effects and dense transcendental noise; with flowing guitar and sitar arpeggios, idyllic wind instruments, and hypnotic and dreamlike keyboards.
"Shadow Kingdom" has the peculiarity of making you experience different feelings and emotions: with suites like "The Fall of Shadow Kingdom" and "Chthonian Odyssey", it can leave you at the mercy of desolation and abandonment. It envelops you in a warm and passionate tender embrace with mystical folk harmonies ("Gorgon", "Sunlone"), esoteric prayers magnificently supported by Solange's voice, almost incorporeal and gracefully enchanting. Finally, it overwhelms you with melodies that let you float in a gap suspended between otherworldly but also concrete dimensions ("Os Deus Cannibais", "A Burial at Sea") that coexist in symbiosis with the natural laws of planet Earth and the entire cosmos.
There is no hint of pretentiousness and cloying exercises in style that pervade the works of other psychedelic folk formations, like the overrated and magniloquent Charalambides: Natural Snow Buildings play fair, they are visionaries who do not want to overdo it at any cost, metaphysical and virtuous yes, but with measure and delicacy.
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