I am writing this in the train, traveling for the sake of it. Riding backwards, everything I glance at from my window is already in the past, a history whose ink barely dried up, a history rewritten with every train that passes. The snowy drones of Invoke / Summons are a perfect match for the unassuming, flat and grassy landscapes gliding by.
Every time Mehdi starts singing, - or chanting - I feel a little closer to nature. Too easy, yes, perhaps, but there is a ritualistic feel to it, rooted humblingly in a place where nothing is man-made. I once read a review that singled Natural Snow Buildings out for their lack of self-consciousness, and I agree that this is absolutely key to them. The tape-machine that just happens to be in the room only appears to be running to backwardly discover something that is not readily heard in the process of creation. A hint at the larger mysteries of life, should anyone still want to know.
And even if it's a cliché, it needs to be said! Time seems to warp, twist and confuse itself through the medium of this music and consequently no one knows where, how and especially WHEN they are. When I pause my music to have my ticket checked it feels like I'm shifting worlds, a nigh-hypnagogic, muddly, tangly state. Both sides of that world-barrier seem now to be faded, anti-aliased, blurred. Colour contrasts taken away and everything merging together in one long, unending drone, a railroad track whose beginning and ending have yet to be determined and whose stations are unoccupied, humming ghostly beyond the veil.
