Album art from Kvitravn by Wardruna, showing the band’s rune-based logo.
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Norwegian folk group Wardruna released their fifth album, Kvitravn, in January of this year. The band is an impressive example of prominent white Europeans embracing aspects of their own traditional culture. As the band puts it, they are “dedicated to creating musical renditions of ancient Norse and Nordic traditions.” (more…)
Van Morrison
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The new groups are not concerned
With what there is to be learned.
They got Burton suits. Ha!
You think it’s funny?
Turning rebellion into money. — The Clash, “White Man in Hammersmith Palais”
Is it not wonderful to see Britain still shining as a beacon of youthful rock ‘n’ roll rebellion, with bands telling it like it is and generally sticking it to The Man? Oh, wait. My mistake. I was thinking of 1979. (more…)
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Who are the greatest underachievers in music history? A few names come to mind. Of course, you have The Sex Pistols, who became a national cultural phenomenon in Britain and then broke up after one album. The Stone Roses are also strong contenders for the cup. Their earth-shattering 1989 debut album regularly shows up on Greatest Albums Ever lists (in 2000, NME placed it #1). When their sophomore effort finally emerged five years later in an entirely changed musical landscape, The Roses had transformed into banal Led Zeppelin clones before imploding with a most undignified whimper. (more…)
Laure LePrunenec performing live with Igorrr.
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Laure LePrunenec is one of the most impressive artists in any genre in the past 15 years. The classically-trained French singer is known for her work with several bands including the avant-garde metal group Öxxö Xööx, the difficult-to-classify Igorrr, and Corpo-Mente. The latter two are collaborations with fellow French musician Gautier Serre and others, and she has also released two very interesting solo albums under the name Rïcïnn. (more…)
Nick Holmes, singer/songwriter for Paradise Lost.
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For many rock musicians, the quality of their output tends to go downhill for good after a certain point. It is not clear whether this is due to age, or whether there is a limit on how many good original ideas one person can produce, but in any case, Paradise Lost is an interesting exception to this trend. Singer and songwriter Nick Holmes was 46 years old when the band’s 15th album was released, and it is their best work yet. (more…)
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Mara Ros is a vocalist from Spain, someone whose heart is in the right place. She doesn’t have a public presence, which may well be sensible after their government has become increasingly globalist. I’ll assume that she’s a very private person, so I won’t speak of what little I do know about her. (more…)
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Modest Mouse was formed in Issaquah, Washington, in the year 1992. Issaquah was formerly a sleepy community removed from the sprawl of the Seattle metropolitan area, but is now another far-flung bedroom town swallowed whole by the Microsoft and later Amazon-centered tech boom and its ensuing concreting of the Puget Sound (more…)
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Kid A belongs on an end-times list of anti-modern records. How is that possible? Radiohead is, by any measure, one of the most successful recording groups in the world and also one of the most reliable when it comes to mainstreaming alternative and experimental music. Does it make sense to call a record like this one (more…)
Hollósy Simon, Zrínyi’s Charge on the Turks from the Fortress of Szigetvár, 1896.
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Nikola Šubić Zrinski is an opera written in 1876 by Croatian composer Ivan Zajc that retells the Siege of Szigetvár. It is Zajc’s most accomplished work and is considered the national opera of Croatia. An excellent recording of the opera was released in late July featuring the Rijeka Symphony Orchestra (more…)
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Sabaton is a Swedish metal band hailing from Falun. Their musical style, in the loose sense of the word, is mostly unremarkable power metal combined with a typically European harte vocal inflection courtesy of the group’s part-Czech lead singer, Joakim Brodén. Sabaton’s shtick, for lack of a more fitting term, is their use of “history” (more…)
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In memory of Gabi Delgado-López (April 18, 1958 — March 22, 2020).
Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft, more concisely known as DAF, is a German electronic music band from Wuppertal consisting of Gabi Delgado-López and Robert Görl. Their name contains a light touch of irony, rendered into English as “German-American Friendship.” (more…)
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Rome is the project of Luxembourgish multi-instrumentalist Jerome Reuter. Genre-wise, one could call Rome “neofolk,” if one assumes that “neofolk” as a genre simply describes reedy guitars and deliberately vague attempts at mysticism. That describes the music of Rome to a T, a project that attempts to synthesize the often-complicated (more…)
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Ernest Greene, the solo multi-instrumentalist behind Washed Out, was born in the state of Georgia. This extended play, Life of Leisure, is a drowsy chillwave mark that has impacted spheres far beyond its initial scope, most notably for the use of its “Feel It All Around” as the main theme for the television show Portlandia. (more…)
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Believe it or not, there was once a time in the now-enviable 2000s in which Midwestern indie bands were considered the epitome of cool. If you wore plaid shirts (sometimes, with a t-shirt over said shirt), could play passable guitar, and had a just-so-slightly off-kilter voice with which you could sing about outsiderdom and ennui, (more…)
Robert Plant (left) and Jimmy Page (right), Chicago, 1977.
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Someone told me there’s a girl out there
With love in her eyes and flowers in her hair
— “Going to California”
Led Zeppelin’s back catalog already includes songs like “Ramble On” from the rocky Led Zeppelin II and the melancholic classic “Tangerine” from the flower-powered III. (more…)
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Steely Dan is a band composed of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen. Their biggest hits have a kind of eternal life, anthems that grace barbecues, bars, and band jams for their simultaneously irreverent, yet wholesome outlook on American culture. This is perhaps best expressed in the group’s own name (more…)
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Venetian Snares is the working name of Canadian music producer Aaron Funk. Funk is best known for producing in the style known as breakcore, which comprises the bulk of this record. “Breakcore” is a semi-recent style developed when new possibilities afforded by sequencing and music production technology allowed artists (more…)
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As you can see. . . girls, music, disease, heartbreak. . . they all go together. . .
About three months ago, I was asked to give one of those “four recommendations” type interviews for an eminent publication (an old buddy’s blog) in the old country. (more…)
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Author’s note: Tomorrow marks one year of my writing for Counter-Currents.
Folklore is Taylor Swift’s eighth studio album. It joined the hallowed halls of other so-called “isolation records” on July 24, 2020, in a surprise release (more…)
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Earlier this year, the Marian Consort, a vocal ensemble known for performing Renaissance music, released an album of Catholic sacred music by English composer William Byrd. The album, entitled Singing in Secret: The Clandestine Catholic Music of William Byrd, is one of the finest sacred music releases in recent memory. (more…)
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“My favorite singer out of all the British girls that ever were.”
— Robert Plant
I first came across the name Sandy Denny on the liner notes of the classic Led Zeppelin IV. (more…)
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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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Crystal Castles is a Canadian band, initially consisting of singer Alice Glass and producer Ethan Kath. The two met each other because of their mutual connections in the large and prolific Toronto music scene, and collaborated on one track, the chaotic “Alice Practice,” as a mere experiment. The two never intended to form a full-time group (more…)
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Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot is a famed French actress, singer, pop culture icon, and accidental provocateur. Bardot’s marks on pop culture include her popularization of the bikini, the eponymous Bardot neckline, and her collection of absurdly fun and often intriguing slices of French pop music that feel both timeless in their replay value yet (more…)
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On this day in 1977, a band from Salford, England called Warsaw took to the stage for the very first time in their career. They were supporting the Buzzcocks at the Electric Circus concert in Manchester.
“Warsaw” was the name chosen by a group of young men, namely Ian Curtis, Bernard Sumner, Terry Mason, and Peter Hook, (more…)
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Even on the waves there is fighting
Where fish and flesh are woven into sea
One stabs the lance while in the army
Another throws it into the ocean
— “Reise Reise” (2004) (more…)
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You’d rather see me in the pen
Than me and Lorenzo rollin’ in a Benz-o
Beat a police out of shape
And when I’m finished, bring the yellow tape
To tape off the scene of the slaughter
Still getting swole off bread and water
I don’t know if they fags or what
Search a nigga down, and grabbing his nuts
And on the other hand, without a gun, they can’t get none.
— N. W. A., “Fuck tha Police.” (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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Arne Nordheim was the most celebrated Norwegian composer of the 20th century. He is known for both his avant-garde electronic works and his large-scale orchestral works and music dramas. Nordheim’s Draumkvedet (“The Dream Ballad”), a music drama based on the medieval Norse poem of the same name, fuses his modernist idiom with folk influences to great effect. (more…)
