Welcome to a rewrite of one of my favourite reviews. Now why am I rewriting this you may ask? Well I just knew I had more to say than I already did say, I want to expand on this album, and you know what, fuck it right a full essay on the thing because that’s what it deserves, so expect this to possibly be my longest review as it’s less of a review and more of a full on analysis of this exquisite album. One of the best albums of all time if not (comparatively) the best album of all time, but I’ll get into that.



What makes this album so amazing? This is one of Natural Snow Buildings’ first releases, their third specifically, their albums prior to this were definitely good albums, Two Sides of a Horse being their debut and a solid release, it even holds up today as something quite unique. While I wouldn’t consider Two Sides of a Horse a good introduction to the band it is definitely an incredible album, and I would put it up there with some of their more well known work. Ghost Folks is next in their catalogue and it doesn’t disappoint either. This album hones in on a more focused idea of post-rock and drone, while the album doesn’t seem to follow a strict narrative there definitely is one to be found, a narrative travelling through the souls of the lost and damned, with some of these tracks being exquisite, but it could be perfected… and it was, by God it was.



This then takes us to 2004, a year after the release of Ghost Folks we receive what I would consider to be Natural Snow Buildings’ magnum opus. A double disked post-rock and drone epic that would even put Godspeed You! To shame! This is an album that blew me away upon first listen, I went into it expecting it to be good, as the other albums I had heard prior were amazing, they had already secured two 10/10s in Daughter of Darkness and The Dance of the Moon and the Sun and many, many 9/10s but this… this was something else. This album blew everything that I had heard prior to this out of the water, into the atmosphere even. This was an album that astonished me, and was quite possibly one of the easiest 10s I have ever given. I want to use this writeup to explain to you, in great detail why I believe this to be one of the greatest albums of all time, and I could even consider it the best album of all time in terms of scope and greatness.



The Winter Ray is a double album set around the effects of war and the shifting climate of government reign and other societal problems that we faced back then and still do today. It is split into two halves, the first half detailing a more dystopian setting while the second half details a world we are more familiar with. It details our present day, now you’d expect me to say that there’s a twist somewhere… but there is none. Side two details our present day society in its true colours, through the dystopian lenses that are constantly covered by our minds.



Side one of this album opens with Overture, an aptly named track to open us into this desolate world. There isn’t too much to say about this track specifically, but the album does do something quite interesting, a lot of these tracks can be grouped together as one longer piece; think of each song a part to a bigger set-piece. Each track following Overture until The Fake and Sad Gunman all link together into one long piece of music. The same happens with tracks Mae Brussel to Toward a Psychocivilized Society and again from Broadcast to Un Manne D’Helicopters and Microwaves. All of these pieces of music have something in common, that is that each one of them tell a smaller story that all fit into the larger story that the album is trying to tell. Our first set of tracks, which I’ll be naming “The Psy-War” from now on details the introduction us as a listener have to this world, what is this world you may ask? Well I’d describe it as a dystopian past of sorts, a different take on World War II. The whole of disc one details this dystopia in different ways, different places. Our first part details the frontlines of our world at war, the difficulties that people face, but not what you would expect them to be. The album has a very specific feeling to it, that’s a feeling of emptiness, of loneliness, this is best shown in tracks like I Don’t Know What Psy War is and The Fake and Sad Lonely Gunman, where the atmosphere created in these tracks and everything between feels overwhelmingly empty. It creates these images of empty battlefields, dead bodies strewn across the grounds with only one or two people remaining alive, one of these being our “Fake and Sad Lonely Gunman”. While he doesn’t play a massive role character wise, none of the so-called characters here play any major role, as that’s the point of the album, it’s to make you feel small and insignificant, it creates this empty and hollow world only for you to slowly rot away in it, listening to these empty drones and the occasional news broadcast, hoping things might change. Each one of these tracks flow into each other perfectly and almost makes it difficult to distinguish when a song begins or ends, but that adds to the expertise of the album really, it sucks you in further and further as you listen, pushing you further and further into this world that the album is trying to create, this world of emptiness and nothingness, that we as humanity have created for ourselves.



As side one continues, it does become darker and darker, as stated earlier, our second passage of music begins on Mae Brussel, I’m going to refer to this passage as “Psychocivilisation”. This is a shorter passage than before, and is really the shortest on the album, this passage takes us on a different route, while previously we saw the frontlines of a battlefield, the soldiers alone in the fields with only their radios to occupy them, playing nothing of use apart from keeping them sane. Psychocivilisation takes us deeper into this world’s governmental practices. On the track Counter in Surgency it gives off that feeling of walking around an empty hall, an empty school maybe, an empty parliament building. You walk these halls alone as you turn corner to corner, seeing nothing but the abandoned ruins of what once was something great. This feeling continues into Experiments on Monkeys but the tone changes, it’s at this point we see the secrets the government has hidden from us. We walk into their secret laboratories and their secret offices and see these heinous things that were once being created, now abandoned by war efforts. Now I can in fact link this back to our original idea of concept for this record, that being it taking place in a dystopian World War II, or a similar era. That being how the Russian and German government were conducting experiments such as these in the midst of World War II, such experiments were done on monkeys and people occasionally, these were of course for “the greater good” and were going to help push the Nazi agenda further, if Germany were to win, which they of course did not, thus leaving these experiments abandoned, but not lost. As Toward a Psychocivilized Society comes to a close, this section of our book is shut, and we move onto the final, or really semi-final passage of music.



Going from Broadcast to Un Manne D’Helicopters and Microwaves, I’m going to refer to this section as “Civilised Detention Centres”. This final passage on the album takes us through the minds of these scientists that I mentioned prior, while this is a shorter passage once again, it let’s us see what these experiments entailed as they were happening. The feelings this passage gives off are unsettling and eerie, a lot more than previously, with Broadcast including Morse code machinery in its instrumentation and using a lot more sampling than we have heard prior to this. This theme continues onto Places of Detention, with the song fading out into a sample, ending with the song’s name being said, which is something I find neat. This passage does feel a lot livelier, but in a bleaker sort of fashion, if you get what I mean. While our first passage was the loneliest, this passage feels equally as lonely, yet it has more going on. With the world crumbling around us we still try to find ways to persevere, as inhumane as they may be. My titling for this passage is a little more unorthodox as you may have noticed, that’s because it has more of a link to what this passage entails. “Civilised Detention Centres” is what this album would describe as war camps, or at least what I would believe this album would call them. As this side of the album still discusses the past in this dystopian light, it wouldn’t surprise me if the use of prisoner experimentation was still occurring, as we move through this final passage, fact and fiction blend as we’re closing in on the end. While it is true that the Nazi’s did experiment on prisoners of war and the Jewish people, this of course did not continue into the twenty-first century. In this scenario, they have. Un Manne D’Helicopters and Microwaves is our penultimate track, and does sound like an oddly uplifting track to send us off on, while it remains bleak and empty, there is a feeling of hope inside of it, that remains until the very end.



This then takes us to the closing track of side one; Falling Space Laser Nikola Tesla. This song is spectacular in not just its story telling, with the use of no vocals or sampling, but also it’s execution as a closing track and its beauty as a song on its own. Falling Space Laser is a song that breaks the norms of the album thus far, while it opens relatively normally, with a long drone section that wouldn’t go amiss anywhere else on the album, it breaks off from this at around the three minute mark, and takes us into this beautifully crafted orchestral section. This is one of my favourite points on the entire album, as the whole of side one had been building to this moment, in which everything comes to an end. This is where fiction takes control and this alternate version of World War II ends in a very different fashion to how it ended in our time. Here we see the “Falling Space Laser” used as a metaphor for… well it’s not hard to guess. A nuclear bomb has gone off, and this track is detailing the endings of this world, while it had already fallen to its knees, which in a funny way was explained backwards, beginning with Civilised Detention Centres and then ending on Psy War, before ultimately coming to a close with Falling Space Laser. It’s all laid out for us and as we’re sucked into this world of emptiness, a light is shone in, the orchestral section of this track is that light, and it’s one of the most beautiful passages of music I’ve ever heard. It feels ethereal in every sense of the word, and beautifully closes this side of the album, pushing me to tears most of the time. It’s beautiful.



Side one takes us on a long journey through a war-torn society set in the 1940s. A time where it seems Hitler had one and wiped out nearly everyone, and all that was left were the sad and lonely gunmen, sat at their perches waiting for their own deaths. And so it was granted, as the “Falling space laser” named “Nikola Tesla” fell onto the earth, and abolished all that had lived there.



Side two now takes us to a more familiar world. On the second side of the record we are in fact taken to our present day, as I mentioned earlier. The rose-coloured glasses are torn off quite violently from the first track “Over Mt Weather” which is quite an unsettling track, and a great tone setter for what this side holds inside of it. It drags us in by the throats and makes us sit and suffer through what we as humanity have really created. This side details a truer to reality version of our reality. Instead of being set in a dystopian past, it is set in our own dystopian present. Once we have travelled over “Mt Weather” which we do return to later on in the record, but I’ll get to that in due time. We arrive at Brighton Beach. Side two of The Winter Ray features a lot less drone-esc elements and decides to go full on Godspeed You! With Brighton Beach being a great example of such. A lot of sampling is used in the track and it is all blended in wonderfully with the song itself, using a slow instrumental build-up as we hear people having fun in the background. This then escalates into a fight breaking out, and the police getting involved, this here is one of the recurring themes of the album, something that does return later on once again, that theme is police brutality, and how much power people have over us as normal people. Brighton Beach is a song that wouldn’t go amiss on an album like F#A# and I’m saying that in the best way possible. As the song comes to a close, the instrumentation fading out and all that is left is the now empty beach, the waves crashing on the shore. A short interlude is bestowed upon us, but it remains effective for sure.



Fishing Hole is the intro to the next track Dead Horses. Fishing Hole on its own is a very unsettling track, using harsh instruments to stick inside of your head, similar to Mt Weather’s eeriness, except a lot more front facing. This then transitions us into Dead Horses, the technically longest track on the album at 17 minutes, which for a Natural Snow Buildings song, that isn’t that long. Here though it definitely makes its mark as a centrepiece for the album. The song uses a lot more post-rock elements, minus the sampling and it uses that to slowly build up tension, while there is no big explosion of sound like a Godspeed song, it doesn’t need one, the song is fine being as it is, slow and brooding. It’s not like we haven’t heard this before throughout the entirety of side one. The song does have that feeling of tension behind it though, that feeling of adrenaline slowly building up as if something is about to happen. Throughout these 17 minutes a lot does occur, samples are uses sparsely throughout the runtime, appearing at the 8-9-minute mark very faintly in the background. They’re used effectively and add to the song nicely. The song does though, pick up its pace at the 13-minute mark. Here we see the first use of vocals on the entire album, vocals from the lead singer of the band. While the vocals are difficult to make out at points, the general gist of them uses horses, and dead horses as a metaphor for people. While there isn’t a lot to comment on about the vocals, as really they feel to be there more as an addition to the music than something to really analyse, they are still something worth pointing out, and something that add to the track and makes it quite an interesting one. While Dead Horses was quite a slow track, and long one, the tension is broken with another long track, this time using a lot more sampling and further pushing the theme I mentioned earlier of police brutality. Ethyl Bromo Acetate is probably one of the most powerful songs on the album, coming right after the behemoth that was Dead Horses, a song that feels like a looming cloud, before speeding up near the end. Ethyl Bromo Acetate features a harrowing sample at around the 4-minute mark. It details an account of police brutality towards a group of protestors. It’s told from the perspective of a concerned woman, and it’s a difficult thing to listen to, as you hear her slowly break down as the song goes on. Once the sample does come to a close, the song leaves us with some more wonderfully crafted drone and post-rock.



It’s at this point I feel this album really makes its mark, while the first half of the record is superb and already one of my favourites of all time, the second half knocks that ball out of the park, and excels in every way, while still keeping its distance and making both sides linked while far apart. Bloody Snow is another song that features vocals, this is in fact a rendition of an older song by Natural Snow Buildings that featured on their 1999 demo, “Tracks on Bloody Snow” named after the opening lyrics of the song. This is one of my favourite vocal oriented songs by the band, and especially on the album, the song seems to detail a murder in the snow, or a murder in the winter. There are tracks on blood stained snow, and there is no indication on who they are from. It’s an oddly uplifting sounding track, given the folk-like instrumentation and calm vocals, the only thing that does leave a mark on you, and unsettles is the drone in the background, reminiscent of something from the first half of the record, it lingers on and makes you feel uneasy, as if something bad is coming… and something bad is coming… something really bad.



Inside Mt Weather is our next song, now you may recall the opening track to this side was titled “Over Mt Weather”, here we in a sense revisit “Mt Weather” as it seems to be an important location for this side of the album. Or is it… I see Mt Weather as a metaphor for the modern world, our dystopian world, Over Mt Weather is our opening to this side of the record, and as we travel above the mount, we only catch a glimpse at the horrors inside, on this track however, all is revealed and I can safely say that Inside Mt Weather is one of the scariest Natural Snow Buildings’ tracks out there. It’s haunting use of samples and distortion leaves your head spinning as if you’re walking through a hall of mirrors, each turn another dead end, there is no escape but then. Nothing. You’re falling through an endless abyss, falling, falling, falling… A roar that sounds like its from the earth itself consumes you whole and it rings your body to the core. Mt Weather is the realisation of our society and what it is, while we travel over it occasionally, when we stop and think, it terrifies us, because real life is terrifying.



We near the tail end of the album now, with only four songs remaining. I Was Always Cold is a sadder and slower track, similar to Dead Horses, except the atmosphere is a lot less tense, in a sense it’s a breather after leaving “Mt Weather”. It’s slow and calming, while opening with a heavy distortion behind it, that soon leaves and we’re left with a soothing drone that feels like a warm fire in front of us. While it is relaxing, there still remains a feeling of sadness, a feeling of loss and want. The song continues this way, but slowly gets consumed by wind and other ambient noises before it deforms into something less than pleasant. By the 7-minute mark the song is taken into this darker realm of distorted chants and the sound of clanging, this remains for a good while before the song changes once again, this time transitioning into another sample. The overall feel of the song has changed along with it, shifting from a more downtrodden tone to a more uplifting one, the final 3-minutes of the track feel uplifting and oddly happy, maybe everything will be ok in the end… The title track follows, a song that begins with a what seems to be a ray of hope, which is funny considering its title. It’s a ray of something, but it is not of hope. The song feels fake, what I mean by this is it feels happy, and uplifting but… something is very wrong, it doesn’t seem right and it makes the song come across as even more haunting. It feels like seeing a ghost of a past relative, while it should be something happy, it’s not. All it is, is scary and saddening. It’s a slow song, that slowly carries us to the end of the album, which I’m sad to say, isn’t a happy one, but you could’ve guessed that. My emotions while listening to this track specifically, after everything this album has put me through, is a feeling of utter emptiness, a feeling of being crushed. While the song doesn’t inherently portray that on the surface, given the context and how far into the record we are at this point, it’s crushing. It’s tear-inducing, and these emotions do not stop… not until after the album is over.



Dead Horses (By the Sea) feels like a reprise of Dead Horses, while not incredibly similar, the song shares its similarities, with not only that song though, but also I Was Always Cold, featuring the intro of the track, this time without the distortion. It’s completely isolated with only vocals to accompany it. This would be a fitting close to the album, it’s solemn, it’s sad and it seems final, but it’s not. There’s still one more track, and after (By the Sea) you are left with this feeling of emptiness and dread, as the song’s lyrics are harrowing to the ear, speaking about death in quite a matter of fact way. This in turn foreshadows the final track. The Exhausted Meteor is the closing track of the album, the entire album; Side two and everything else. This is the final song that you will listen to, and it sounds final. It’s a departure from everything we had heard prior to this, and instead is a song that feels completely desolate, a song that leaves you with a feeling of dread and emptiness. There is no happy ending, to this album, to life itself. We are slowly killing ourselves and this song, this album details it. It goes through our past transgressions and shows us what could’ve happened, if we hadn’t stopped it, yet then takes us on a journey through our own present, and it ends in the exact same way. The death of everything. Dead Horses (By The Sea) portrays this wonderfully through its bleak lyrics and sad tone, the Exhausted Meteor then shows us this through its repeating tones of doom. The drones that sound like nothing but death itself, actually not even that. They sound like something after death. Something beyond death, Earth after death has raped the land, this is after the end, the end that we as humanity have caused. While in the first half of the album our demise is something quite beautiful which was demonstrated through Falling Space Laser, here our death is a lot more realised, it’s a lot more real. When it comes it won’t be something nice, it won’t be something beautiful, it will be harrowing and painful. This album leaves you on a final note of hopelessness, a note of pain and sorrow that leaves you feeling nothing. It drains you completely.



The Winter Ray is by far one of the best albums ever created, musically for sure. While it is not my all time favourite album, I would deem it as above my favourites in terms of structure and impact. Why it doesn’t tower over them in ranking? Well the albums I have chosen as my all-time favourites have an emotional resonance with me, they mean a lot to me and they make me feel a lot of things, The Winter Ray does do this to me of course, but it personally doesn’t outshine what those other albums have done to me, but it has outshone everything on a musical standpoint that I have heard prior. It is an ethereal experience to go through, it is two and a half hours of musical genius, musical excellence, musical perfection. Everything here is perfectly laid out, and it all makes sense in the end, each message, each metaphor, each meaning is all realised by the end of the album. It’s an album detailing our history, and our future history. It details the things wrong with our society and draws parallels to what our society is now, and how it isn’t that different to what it was before. The government controlling us which is shown many times during both sides of the record, in different ways, yet it all still clicks. The final song on the album then leaves us with a feeling of nothing at all. You have to sit and take it all in really, and it’s amazing. The Winter Ray is by far one of the best if not the best album of all-time. It is musical perfection only outshone by my own personal affection towards other albums.



Thank you for reading this really, really long essay on this album, if you even did read the whole thing, which I hope you did. I hope this at least made you consider listening to the album, and if not then why did you read this far? All in all, goodnight or day, I love you all and I hope you enjoy this album as much as I am able to, and hopefully can realise its brilliance too.