# Interview: Natural Snow Buildings

By Ferdinando De Vita – March 7, 2010


We had the chance to get to know the French duo behind one of the best albums of 2009 more deeply. Here are Mehdi Ameziane and Solange Gularte: **Natural Snow Buildings.**

**What’s it like living in Vitré? Have you ever thought about living somewhere else?**

Vitré turned out to be a good place to live and create. But I think we wouldn’t have liked living here during our teenage years because it’s so quiet and still. We’ve lived here for five years and we’re not bored at all.

**What was the first album you ever bought?**

**S:** The Wall by Pink Floyd
**M:** I’m not sure, but it was either *Like a Virgin* by Madonna or *Hounds of Love* by Kate Bush.

**Now that people are finally starting to notice you... Do you have a tour planned?**
We’ll probably tour the UK this year, but nothing’s confirmed yet. We’ll see.

**How do you compose your music? Who usually starts first?**
We just play and let things flow. We layer sounds and leave them as they are.

**Why do you release your albums in such limited editions? Wouldn’t you like to be in every fan’s music library?**

When we released The Dance of the Moon and the Sun, we honestly believed our music would appeal to maybe 40 or 50 people at most. With the CD-Rs we made ourselves, we wanted to stay consistent, ignoring temptation and limiting production so we could focus on the quality of the music, the artwork, and the packaging. Besides, people who really want our music can still download it. Things have changed a little since then. Now we work with small labels that can sell up to 1,000 copies. Our records are expensive to produce, partly because of the artwork. And let’s face it — we’re not exactly a best-selling band.

**I loved the booklet for Shadow Kingdom. Can you tell us about the vampire theme?**

One of the ideas behind the comic was to present a different perspective on vampires, something apart from the version mass media tends to push — to revive a bit of lost knowledge about them. We found material in the writings of Agnes Murgoci, an anthropologist who studied Eastern European folklore in the 1920s and ’30s. The story we chose is direct, macabre, and seemingly absurd. Solange illustrated it to resemble a kind of guide for young female tourists searching for hell and damnation. A thousand years ago, vampires were seen as a serious problem in Romania — corpses were still being exhumed to check if they were vampires. To us, Shadow Kingdom is a kind of shadowy, peripheral world where superstition, forgotten knowledge, and lost traditions are abandoned — a latent world you can’t reach directly. You can only get there through music and art, which help restore everything’s original meaning.

**Why are you so fascinated by vampires?**

Vampires are liminal beings — present but absent, alive but dead, moving like puppets. They’re people we once knew who have become complete strangers, who’ve left home but still linger, who remember their past lives but can never return to them. We all become vampires eventually because we all change beyond recognition. They represent an alternative humanity — a way to better define the one we live in.

**How do you see Shadow Kingdom within your overall discography?**

To us, it’s simply another step.

**What were your three favorite albums of 2009?**

Mostly reissues:
    • The Henry Cow box set
    • The Buttes County Free Music Society box set
    • The reissue of Ode to Quetzalcoatl by Dave Bixby
    • The reissue of Maison Rose by Emmanuelle Parrenin
Also, the album by Broadcast and The Focus Group, Lumen Tadden by Kuupuu, and Everything Goes Wrong by Vivian Girls.

**Are you for or against music file sharing?**

We’re in favor. We don’t buy into the narrative that downloaders are villains. In the ’70s, major labels thought the invention of the audio cassette would destroy the entire music industry. The times have changed, but the fear of copying hasn’t. MP3s are just faded copies, after all. As artists, we gain nothing by criminalizing kids who want to expand their cultural knowledge using the fastest means available. On the contrary, we benefit from encouraging curiosity and exploration in music. Also, the idea that musical experience shouldn’t depend on a person’s income is very appealing. So we believe it’s the artist’s role to encourage people to buy music — and to seduce them with well-crafted physical releases.