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)