Osi and the Jupiter - Appalachia

In the late 1990s, I had a minor obsession with 4AD records, specifically with the collective output under the name This Mortal Coil. There was something very foreign and attractive in their lush soundscapes. Something that didn't exist in my corner of Southern (Christmas tree farming, not coal mining) Appalachia.

Osi and the Jupiter is the solo pagan dark folk project of Ohio's Sean Kratz, and is mostly known for a couple of excellent albums of neo-Norse folk. However, Kratz is also from Appalachia, and recorded a three song EP dedicated to our shared "homeland and the spiritual connection to the dense forested mountains".

Imagine if Ivo Watts-Russell had set up shop not in London, but in a barn somewhere on the back way between Morgantown and Parkersburg. The resulting catalog would not have sounded so much like This Mortal Coil, but instead would be this album.

From the lush cellos of "They Ride Through the Sky on Horse Drawn Chariots", with its echoes of
"Velvet Belly", to the vocal cues shared by "Appalachia" and "Come Here My Love", this is essentially the album I never knew I wanted.

Comments

Agriculture - Agriculture

a While calling themselves ''ecstatic" black metal, Agriculture traipses along the line between atmo-black and blackgaze pretty adroitly. I am not as head over heels as some of the metal press I have been reading about them (like Rolling Stone for instance), but I think they have a good thing going here. They remind me of Vattnet Viskar sort of, and I am going to withhold judgement until I can see them live to really decide. That said, this is an album that has been in heavy rotation at my house since its release. Agriculture by Agriculture

葬尸湖 (Zuriaake) - 孤雁 (Gu Yan)

The thing I continue to love about this album, now five years after it came out, is how unabashedly Chinese it is. For me, there is nothing quite so nice as taking something from somewhere else and adapting it to your particular circumstance, whether it be food, music, or whatever else. The world is filled with terrible Nordic imitators, so I am always really stoked to see bands who lean in hard to their local scene / culture / roots. This is probably one of the albums that really sent me down that path, and I will always be indebted to Zuriaake for that. Gu Yan is an epic, sprawling, even cinematic, album, and should appeal to fans of bands like Wolves in the Throne Room and Primordial . Musically, there are serious elements of Summoning here, but most of this album is utterly unique to Zuriaake and the atmosphere they build is entirely their own. Traditional instruments back up the backbone of the sound, not as a gimmick, but as the bedrock on which the whole edifice rests. ...

Dødsferd - Skotos

Raw atmospheric black metal it it's sun soaked Mediterranean best. Wait... That's not right. Oh, but it is. For 20 years, Greece has been the home of Dødsferd since it's beginning as a one-man side project. Now, 10 albums, as many splits and EPs, and five comps, two new songs are available. Packaged with a re-release of the landmark album 'Diseased Remnants of a Dying World', what you have here is the pinnacle of what raw atmo-black can be. A full LP of this would easily be Album of the Year. I can still hope right? Skotos (Atmospheric Black Metal) by DØDSFERD (Greece)

Trumpet of Amdusias

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