• Music

    Linnea Hjertén – Nio Systrar

    January 29, 2024 - By 

    From Linnea Hjertén’s Bandcamp site: “Born from the synthesis of Swedish folk melodies and ritual ambient, Linnea Hjertén’s debut album “Nio systrar” (‘Nine sisters’) is a wordless invocation of primordial energy – a psychoacoustic gateway to altered states of consciousness. Each of the nine tracks brings us deeper into the cycle of spiritual death and rebirth, stripping away the old to make way for the new. With a musical maturity far beyond her years, Hjertén channels the ethereal beauty of Dead Can Dance, the spellbinding chants of Kari Rueslåtten, and the minimalist Nordic atmosphere of Forndom. […] With an expansive…

  • Music

    Nechochwen – Algonkian Mythos

    May 12, 2022 - By 

    While reading Bandcamp Daily on my feed, I came across a black metal band out of West Virginia called Nechochwen.  The article is enlightening, but it got me interested in exploring their music a bit deeper.  This particular album, Algonkian Mythos, is technically a ‘metal’ album, but it is so atmospheric that it could almost count as a neofolk album.  The instrumentation is sparse and has a spirit of foreboding.  This, for my ears, is metal done right.

  • Music - Spotify

    Tomáš Kočko Orchestr – Ona

    December 31, 2021 - By 

    The Tomáš Kočko Orchestr are one of the great musical treasures of my new home city of Brno.  They band mixes true Moravian folk music, including some melodies with pre-Christian roots (so, at least a millennium of music here), world music and even touches of metal to great effect. The concept of their latest album is based on the women of Moravia, whose character and strength preserved the culture despite attempted encroachments from within and without. From the band’s press release: The songs come from the Moravian folk tradition and talk about the experiences of the great-grandmothers of today’s women…

  • Music

    虚极 (Bliss-Illusion) – 森罗万象 (Shinrabansho)

    March 8, 2021 - By 

    虚极 (Bliss-Illusion) are a band based in China who have caused quite a sensation all across the world of Black Metal.  The music is a combination of the aforementioned Black Metal but adding a twist by mixing post-rock, straight-ahead metal, elements of doom, shoegaze and what they term to be folk-metal.  If you’re sensitive to screaming vocals, you might want to sit this one out, but it works rather well with the music.