Fresh Snow
Fresh Snow is a post-rock/instrumental noise-rock/krautrock quartet from Toronto. I don’t know very much about them, but they’re on the wonderful little Toronto label Hand Drawn Dracula. I’ve written about that label a bunch of times, but not lately. Check out the posts I’ve written about HDD artists Vallens, and Beliefs, and Praises, as well as the post about Weeknight. That album by Weeknight was on a HDD sub-label called Artificial Records. I don’t know if Artificial is still under the HDD umbrella, or not, but that’s not important right now. That album was also my tenth favorite album of 2014.
Fresh Snow got started in 2010, and their 2013 debut album I ended up on a lot of year-end lists. They also were long-listed for the 2014 Polaris Music Prize. The band released a new EP Won last week, and it’s damm good. After being so Hopscotch-focused for the whole weekend, and taking a day off before resuming my “song of the day” posts, I’m finally, albeit slowly, catching up on the hundreds of emails that I missed over the weekend. Among those emails was one promoting this new EP.
“Blood in the Sun” by Fresh Snow
The beginning of the song, with the piano and distant feedback reminds me a bit of some songs by Mono (Japan). Specifically like something circa For My Parents At 1:03, there’s a big gear shift, and it sounds like something different. Harder, louder, faster. Mono certainly employs those kinds of mid-song sea changes, but after that 1:03 mark, this doesn’t sound like Mono. Maybe like some of the heavier Mogwai songs. I’ve seen that used as a reference marker before. Other writers have said that within one song, Fresh Snow might change from Godspeed to Mogwai to something else. It’s never a bad thing to be compared to any of those bands.
There are a couple of times in this song where there’s an absolutely crushing wave of sound. Heavy distortion, thundering drums, a huge wall of pink noise, and more. It goes like that from 1:50 to 2:14, then again from 3:01 to 3:50. In between those gloriously noisy bits is a section that’s motorik-driven. My favorite bits are those really noisy bits, and also that Mono-esque intro.
You can buy Won via HDD here in digital or vinyl format. Please note that today’s song is only available on the digital version.
this is that song 
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