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The Peoples Temple, the utopian death cult best known for the Jonestown Massacre, recorded a gospel album under the name of the People’s Temple Choir in 1973. Far from an amateurish production, the album He’s Able features slick studio trickery and a surprisingly talented backing band for the choir to swing cuts of pop songs, (more…)
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Crisis was an English punk-rock band formed in 1977 in Surrey. Their initial lineup consisted of Insect Robin the Cleaner, Phrazer, and the most famous two who didn’t have absurd nicknames: Douglas Pearce and Tony Wakeford. Crisis was explicitly a Leftist band, appearing at various Rock Against Racism concerts and collaborating with artists and organizers from the Anti-Nazi League. (more…)
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Essence! is the most recent batch of material from Douglas Pearce’s Death in June, released on November 30, 2018. Essence! pulls from the earlier output of 90s Death in June, including its eclectic sampling work, noisy elements, and tastefully perverse whip-cracks for its compositions. Pearce brings the Death in June sound into the modern age, however (more…)
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Released 12 years ago yesterday, March 3rd, 2008, Death in June’s The Rule of Thirds is a somber and introspective record that tussles with the concepts of aging and death, love lost, and the decay of the surrounding world. It’s recorded in the characteristic stripped-back, solemn, guitar-centric style of Douglas Pearce, Death in June’s sole constant member, (more…)
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Recently my new nomadic, couch-surfing existence took me to New York City, where I saw Death in June on Saturday, May 31 at Webster Hall in the Village. (In case you were there, I was the white guy dressed in black.) (more…)
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It was one of those clubs where you go and you stand on your own, and you leave on your own, and you go home and you cry, and you want to die. But Death in June was playing there, and I had never seen them in concert. So I decided to temporarily interrupt my exile from California (roughing it in Jackson Hole) and descend again to the sinful cities of the plain.
I very much enjoyed seeing Death in June live. (more…)
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Insofar as Fire and Ice’s music can be described as “folk” it is the folk music of the ancient skalds and scops, far antecedent to the recent folk revival even if elements of tradition are latently present in that revival. Insofar as it is “gothic” music it is so in the sense described by Edred Thorsson in “The Secret of the Gothick God of Darkness” — (more…)
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Death in June
Peaceful Snow / Lounge Corps
NER 2010
Death in June emerged from the English post-punk scene of the early 1980s. Death in June was originally a trio, but two of the founding members left in 1984 and 1985, so now the group consists of Douglas Pearce along with a shifting set of collaborators. Pearce, now 54, currently lives in Australia.
