Jards Anet da Silva – better known as Jards Macalé – is a Brazilian singer-songwriter, active since the mid–sixties. Born in 1943 in the Tijuca neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, Macalé had a precocious contact with music through his family in his childhood, and formed his first musical groups when he was a teenager. Soon thereafter, he learned how to play several instruments, like cello and acoustic guitar, as well as musical theory. In the sixties, Macalé gained some prominence when he became involved in the Tropicália cultural movement, that would later reveal many talented musicians, some of which would become relevant artists in contemporary Brazilian music. By the late sixties, Macalé had established himself as a prominent songwriter, having songs of his authorship recorded by other artists. He also became a respected concert manager, and with some partners from the music business, created his own spectacle agency.

By the late sixties and early seventies, Macalé was a solid name in the business, working mainly for other artists. He wrote songs, musical arrangements, assisted in production and recording, and organized everything concerning the musical direction of concerts and LP’s. Nevertheless, he sought to venture into a solo career; so, in 1970, he released a compact, titled Só Morto. Soon thereafter, now renowned singer-songwriter Caetano Veloso invited Macalé to record an album with him in the UK – together with other artists –, and Macalé accepted. Macalé worked as a musical director for Caetano Veloso, but when the album, titled Transa, was released in 1972, Macalé became extremely resentful after discovering his name was not in the credits.   

When the bitterness was over, Macalé returned to Brazil and started working in his first full-length album. The eponymous Jards Macalé – an album containing nine tracks – was released in the same year as Transa, by Caetano Veloso, in 1972, Macalé also worked with the same musicians, Lanny Gordin and Tutty Moreno.

In the following years, Macalé also achieved moderate prominence as a soundtrack composer for films and theater plays; he is occasionally employed as an actor by some of the productions for which the music he signed the score. 

Besta Fera, his most recent release, is an excellent and genuinely Brazilian masterpiece. The album has twelve tracks: 1) Vampiro de Copacabana; 2) Besta Fera; 3) Trevas; 4) Buraco da Consolação; 5) Pacto de Sangue; 6) Obstáculos; 7) Meu Amor Meu e Cansaço; 8) Tempo e Contratempo; 9) Peixe; 10) Longo Caminho do Sol; 11) Limite; 12) Valor; while this album delivers some of the more general trends that were always present in popular Brazilian music, the peculiar style of Jards Macalé is decidedly authorial and intrinsically singular. His creative sensibilities playfully disperses the harmonies among the volatile dissolutions of his soft, somewhat jazzy and fragmented melodies.

Although the entire album is a formidable, original and passionate work of art, the tracks that mostly caught my attention are Buraco da Consolação, Pacto de Sangue, Obstáculos and Meu Amor Meu e Cansaço; the fourth until the seventh, in direct sequence. The final song, Valor, also has a deeply introspective, lugubrious and sensible premise, that is wonderfully filled by a soft, but melancholic tenderness.  

With some Bossa Nova and neoclassical elements subtlety incorporated into the dispersive and elegant structure of his music, the style of Jards Macalé is widely impregnated with the glorious, refined and exotic tonalities of sixties Brazilian music. The fourth track, Buraco da Consolação, transmits perfectly the gracious sensibilities of this peculiar type of musical atmosphere, that displays a delicate, placid and surreal tenacity, whose latent, but soft and imponderable melodies undoubtedly revitalizes the sonorous past references of a country whose high culture was definitely at the peak of its splendor. 

Pacto de Sangue has a vivacious and graciously urban rhythm, whose playful guitar lines redefines the melodies over the renitent beauty of its exotic and charismatic charm. Obstáculos – with a relatively melancholic and somber atmosphere –, seems to acknowledge and project the exasperating shadows of a dying afternoon, that slowly dilutes into the vague and evasive underworld of a lugubrious life, that seems resented with the tragedy of its pale and lethargic existence. 

Meu Amor Meu e Cansaço – with sensationally vivid and splendorous musical overtones that dilates the tenacity of its resigned and serene stagnant graciousness –, displays a poetic sensibility that not only understands the lucidity of its cautiously sculpted and restrained melodies, but contemplates the fugacious contempt of an everlasting disillusion, that will be forever impregnated into the consciousness of the soul. 

Other songs, like Peixe, with its tender, humane and calmly smooth, captivating melody, Longo Caminho do Sol, with its fantastic choir of wonderful and amazingly tuned female voices, and Limite, with its poetic and melancholic atmosphere, sidelined by distant, despondent and dissonant guitar lines, are also wonderfully splendid tracks, that genuinely brings on the strength of its formidably consistent essence an exceptional degree of artistry.  

All in all, the whole album is fantastic, beautiful and full of a genuine artistic essence, whose soul is definitely shaped over a vortex of magnificent grandiosity.    

The way the artist explores sound textures and beautiful harmonies departing from guitar lines conceives a conjuncture of wonderfully creative cantilenas, that irradiates a graceful mosaic of melodies, that detaches its colorful horizons of dense and vivid serenity from the realistic depictions of a tender and sometimes despondent portrait of dramatically pungent sentimental tonalities. Evidently, Besta Fera is an album that aggregates a marvelous conjuncture of undeniable qualities to contemporary Brazilian music. 


Wagner

Severino Dias de Oliveira – better known as Sivuca –, was a Brazilian musician, who achieved international notoriety at the peak of his career, having resided in Europe and the United states, at the height of his fame as a playfully skilled and versatile accordionist. He also played acoustic guitar, besides being a creative songwriter and a profoundly methodical arranger. A very eclectic musician, his genres of preference were mostly styles exclusive to Brazilian music, like choro, baião, frevo and forró, though he also played blues, jazz and classical music, amongst many other genres.  

Sivuca was born in May 26, 1930, in Itabaiana, in the state of Paraíba, in northeast Brazil. When he was nine years old, his father gave him an accordion, and the passion for music was then rapidly developed. After some years – as soon as he started to improve his talents –, he began to attract attention locally. At fifteen years old, he became part of a radio station staff in Recife, capital of the state of Pernambuco, and at twenty-one years old, he recorded his first album. In the same year, Sivuca released a single in a partnership with musician Humberto Teixeira that became a national success. 

With the firm resolution to consolidate a career in music, in 1955 Sivuca moved to Rio de Janeiro, then the capital and cultural center of Brazil. In the following year, he released another album, titled Motivo para Dançar. Then Sivuca toured Europe as part of a musical group called Os Brasileiros, and by the end of the decade, he started living in Europe, more precisely in Portugal and France. 

In this period, Sivuca’s international career started to ignite with cohesive intensity, and soon he became an artist sought by professional musicians to integrate their bands, as a composer, arranger and instrumentalist. His formidable degree of professionalism, competence and commitment impressed everybody who had the opportunity of working with him, and Sivuca started to build a solid reputation in the business. In the sixties, Sivuca moved to the United States, where he worked closely with South-African singer Zenzile Miriam Makeba, with whom he toured for several years, until the end of the decade. Sivuca lived in the United States for more than twelve years, until 1976. In the next decade, Sivuca worked in Scandinavia, with several jazz musicians. 

When he returned to Brazil, Sivuca started to compose movie soundtracks, and participated heavily in the regional music scene, consolidating his reputation as a virtuous patrimony of Brazilian folk music. He was a widely active recording artist, having released more than thirty albums, in a career that spanned half a century, most of which was accompanied by his wife, 72 years old singer-songwriter Glória Gadelha, that participated in several of his musical projects, and currently works with her daughter to preserve Sivuca’s artistic legacy.  

Sivuca died in December 14, 2006, at 76 years old. For sure, he will be deeply missed, but fortunately, his magnificent legacy survives, and his majestically creative and eclectic musical treasures remain, for the joy and amusement of folk music enthusiasts. 


Wagner

Fractured was an electro industrial act from Canada, that started in 2003 as a solo project of legendary musician Nick Gorman. His first release was a demo titled Contami-Nation, whose marvelous qualities caught the attention of an European label, Dependent Records. Soon afterwards, Fractured became more of a real band, with the addition of two musicians, Famine and Morgana. The trio together worked, conceived and released in 2005 the debut album, Only Human Remains, a formidable and fantastically original masterpiece, that came to be Fractured’s most successful and iconic release. 

With eleven tracks – What Is The Moment Of True, Only Human Remains, Everytime, Becoming One, Bleed, Between The Lines, Haunted Memories, Stratified Society, One More Time, Try To Forget and Cold Eyes – this record undoubtedly is a milestone in the history of industrial music. With sinister and hazardous, though imperiously melodic and exponentially intense harmonious layouts, Only Human Remains became an exceedingly majestic underground reference for the genre, with its derelict and lugubrious, though sensible and dense style, that definitely contributed to establish more serious, professional and artistic principles to industrial music as a whole. 

The most notorious songs from this album are the title track, Only Human Remains, Becoming One, Bleed and One More Time. Despite all of its undeniable qualities, versatility and authenticity, Only Human Remains is an underestimated album, that never achieved the true degree of recognition and acknowledgement it deserves. Although deeply appreciated by the underground – moreover, a small, though devoted group of cult followers – the album displays sensible, melancholic and intuitive peculiarities, that reveals a powerfully creative and audacious musical narrative, with crucial and deeply innovative elements, that configures on the diagram of its sonorous anatomy a gracious level of inventiveness, that demonstrates an elegant and marvelous degree of brilliant cohesiveness, originality and dedication, relatively uncommon in the genre.     

Several years after Only Human Remains, in 2011, Fractured released its second (and so far, last) album, Beneath The Ashes. With the departure of Famine and Morgana, this record is basically a solo effort of Nick Gorman, and not a collaborative group creation.

With twelve tracks – Beneath The Ashes, For What, You Are (The Voice Inside My Head), Anaesthetic, Transcendental Rage For The Fundamentals, Dig, Save Me, Straight Jacket Fashion, Interlude, Fly Away, We Bare These Scars and
Disengage – this album has more serene and melodic tunes, and reverberates protuberant, sophisticated and elemental idiosyncrasies, that represents an elegant and creative evolution, that condones an artistic departure from the more crude and rough sonorous surface of the previous album, that, despite its unexpected level of gracious and virtuous originality, was more closely associated to traditional industrial music.

With mordacious and sensational audacious overtones, the almost radical change in style reveals a restless artist with an unquestionable disposition to reinvent himself without fear of trying new things. Despite its elegant harmonies and sensitively genuine sonorous outlook, this album is not as fantastic as the previous one, nor did it draw so much attention. Nevertheless, Nick Gorman displays his diligent musical abilities, and exposes the creative density and outright versatility of his graceful talent. My favorite tracks in this album are: You Are (The Voice Inside My Head), Dig, Straight Jacket Fashion, Interlude and Far Away. 
 
For me, these four tracks are the most representative of Fractured’s music, and their most elegant, lugubrious, dispersive, pungent and incisive songs.

This is certainly my favorite Fractured music, and probably the first one that I’ve heard, several years ago. A formidable, lucid and spectacular exemplar of industrial music, its hostile and rough tonalities reverberates on its renitent sonorous diagram a sensible and perceptive conjuncture of harmonies, that gracefully contrast its impenitent and hazardous ordeal with the poetic and beautiful majesty of the song’s melodies.    

Here, you have the same song, though in a different version (described as the “original” one). It’s exceedingly beautiful and elegant too – with more fatalist, imperative and auspiciously dense melodic overtones – that certainly increases the ascendant corporeal cohesiveness of the rhythmic body of the music, expanding vividly in more diluted and overall flexible passages. In my opinion, somewhat inferior to the previous version, nevertheless, this is an outstanding and exhilarating song, that deserves its place of honor. 

This is my second favorite Fractured song. One More Time is a beautiful and melancholic industrial serenade, whose melodies transpire a lugubrious and fading humanity, conceived by the gracious depressive musical layout of a primordial and comprehensive artistic sensibility. 

Becoming One – in order of preference –, is my third favorite Fractured song. With a very lucid and sagacious melodic direction, the song reverberates a subtle and discreet agony, that is overtly dispersive and cynic, though fulfilled by a spiritual aneurysm that overcomes in the depths of its furiously dense harmonies the darkness of reality. 

Conclusion: 

Since Beneath The Ashes – released eight years ago – Fractured hasn’t released anything. So, it’s hard to define the project’s exact whereabouts, if it’s in a dormant state or if it’s ceased to exist for good. 

It’s difficult to say if Nick Gorman will ever release another album under the Fractured moniker. Apparently, the project never officially disbanded, so it’s impossible to say precisely what’s Fractured current status, especially giving the prolonged hiatuses between albums. Nevertheless, we certainly wish nothing but success to Nick Gorman in all his musical (or non-musical) projects. If he ever reform or release anything in the future under the Fractured name, we will be dying to check to it out, in great expectation. If not, the album Only Human Remains will always be an iconic release of industrial music, a genuine milestone, cohesive and beautiful enough to consolidate his legacy and contributions to the genre. 


​Wagner

Aphotic Apathy is a dark ambient musical project, created by American musician Alex Alexander, active for a year, from early 2015 to early 2016. So far, the artist has released several records under the moniker, which are literally impossible to define precisely how many they are, as well as their exact order of release, since Alexander has the habit to delete albums from his Bandcamp page, whenever he feels the desire to. He also re-uploads them sometimes, with an entirely different cover artwork.  

On this article, I have analyzed all the records the artist currently has on his Bandcamp page. They are, by order of release, The Engineers, Nostromo, The Space Jockey, The Elders and Paradise. Some records, like The Sevastopol, were deleted, and are not available anywhere, not even on YouTube. The artist has also deleted his Soundcloud, as well as his Facebook page, for reasons unknown. 

Aphotic Apathy delivers a peculiar style of dark ambient, that, as the artist himself describes in his profile, is basically influenced by the tense, ambiguous, afflictive and sinister atmospheres of Alien and The Predator movie franchises, that he tries to recreate. For this reason, all his albums addresses a particular story – you can read each one of them in his Bandcamp page –, whose main goal is to drive the listener into a dark fantasy dimension of doom and demise, inspired by the lugubrious, horrifying and dreadful nature of the movies mentioned above. The story behind all the albums are mostly interconnected, each one of them can be seen as a chapter that is part of a larger picture. 

The first album, released almost four years ago – on March 15, 2015 – is The Engineers. I already reviewed this album (you can read the review here). 

The second album, Nostromo – originally titled The Nostromo – was released only a few days after The Engineers, on March 30, 2015. 

This record has twelve tracks. They are: 1) Awaken; 2) Mother; 3) Signal; 4) LV-426; 5) Derelict; 6) Exploration; 7) Space Jockey; 8) Cargo; 9) Eggs; 10) Host; 11) Nostromo; 12) Narcissus; a far more easier, cathartic and soft album, this is probably the most homogeneous, expansive and dilated work on Aphotic Apathy’s discography. Nevertheless, it’s an extravagant and beautiful record, that attests the compromise, the stylish lucidity and the overall professionalism of the artist, that presents to his audience a cold sonorous density, upon which you can really feel yourself transported into a distant, dangerous and hostile faraway place. The story that underlines the album reads: “The crew of The Nostromo consists of seven people from various fields. They include Captain Dallas, Warrant Officer Ripley, Navigator Lambert, Engineering Technician Brett, Executive Officer Kane, Science Officer Ash, and Chief Engineer Parker. All awoken by "Mother" the computer mainframe that served aboard The Nostromo. Mother also operated many of the ship's background systems, and auto-piloted the vessel while the crew were in hypersleep. 

Before the crew awoke, Mother partially decoded a unidentified warning signal that started emanating from LV-426, Mother awoke the crew from hypersleep to investigate and hopefully recover a potential parasitoid specimen from a derelict ship located on the moon. Unbeknownst to the crew, except one member Science Officer Ash who was given a classified retrieval order by Weyland-Yutani, Special Order 937: Which ensured the retrieval and survival of a sample specimen of the species located on LV-426, and stipulated that this task superseded all other priorities, even the safety and survival of the crew.” 

To give you some insight about how the artist tries to tell a story, and capture precisely the nature and the atmosphere of the situations upon which the underlying sound portrays with its dark tonalities and obscure devices, the ninth track, Eggs, probably – and very discreetly – displays a chapter of the space odyssey where the breed of the parasitoid specimen mentioned above breaks the eggshell, being born to life. 

The next album, The Space Jockey, was released only a few days after its predecessor, on April 11, 2015. A more concise album, this record has only nine tracks: 1) Biomechanoid; 2) Astreunuchen; 3) Mundus Gubernavi; 4) Corridor I; 5) Corridor II; 6) Necronom; 7) Hieroglyphics; 8) Derelict Cockpit; 9) H.R. Giger Tribute; an album that mostly follows the style of its predecessor closely – albeit with excruciatingly more sinister and frivolous, though discreetly afflictive sonorous tonalities, The Space Jockey, despite the fact that this record can be considered an excellent exemplar of dark ambient music, is probably the most simple and predictable of them all. 

Nevertheless, its lugubrious, realistic and dense atmosphere can drive the listener directly to the undying horrors lurking in the darkness of the unknown dangers that hide within this universe of abnormal fear and ferocity. The sixth track, Necronom – which is a possible reference to H. P. Lovecraft’s Necronomicon – certainly is the best, the deadliest and the most macabre of the entire record. 
 
The story behind this work reads: “Long before Prometheus uncovered the origins of the Engineer and his species, the mysterious 'Space Jockey' for many the most mysterious thing of the Alien film was held captive in everyone’s mind. The lonely sentinel first encountered by the doomed crew of the ship Nostromo, the haunting discovery of the enormous lonely star gazer remains one of the most memorable moments in the Alien franchise. Based on the iconic bio-organic industrial designs of Swiss artist H. R. Giger, who designed every detail of the fossilized sentinel. 

The Space Jockey, a tragic traveler who fell victim to his own lethal cargo and was forever frozen, trapped in time and space.”

H. R. Giger, mentioned above – and whose ninth track is a homage to – was a notorious Swiss artist, who was part of the special effects team for several movies, including some of the Alien franchise. He was the original creator of the Alien creature, as well as the space jockey, for which this album is named. 

The next album, The Elders, was released in June 5, 2015. With eleven tracks – 1) Transcendence; 2) Primordial; 3) Reverie; 4) Council; 5) A Planet; 6) Sacrifice; 7) Creation; 8) Evolution; 9) Return to Paradise; 10) Elders; 11) Vessel; – this is easily the most accessible, peaceful and serene of all albums in the Aphotic Apathy’s discography. 

With a placid and ostensibly calmer musical layout, and a very patient – though relatively sinister occasionally – style, the melodies prevalent on this album are like graceful symphonies forgotten in the colorless winds of time, whose harmonious dissonances share its sincere, devotional and elegant features with the cordial densities of a tranquil and sentimental honesty. In several ways, this is the most distinct and singular album Alex Alexander (assuming that this is his real name) released under the Aphotic Apathy alias, since its mostly soft, innocent and almost affable nature displays an atmosphere radically different from the other albums. 

This subtle change in style certainly was created purposefully, with the aim to transmit to the listener the somewhat friendly nature of The Elders, a race of knowledgeable and transient aliens, that periodically travels to Earth, to assist the human race with their splendorous grace and wisdom. As the story reads, “The Elders are a wise, respected race who are knowledgeable and technologically advanced. The Engineers have been around for at least 35,000 years according to the cave paintings discovered by Holloway and Shaw (Prometheus); The other (Elders) are hundreds of thousands of years older than the Engineer and that is evident from the Elder's wrinkled, thin and almost wood like skin. They have the ability to travel through space. They returned to Earth numerous times to teach various civilizations an unknown number of things. They also partake in sacrifices/ceremonies in which they sacrifice a young Engineer of their own to create a species that resemble them (Humans). 

Not much is known about The Elders, but I believe them to be a non-hostile force that seeks only to create life and share knowledge. I guess you can refer to them as Priests.”

The music of this album is severely translucent and omnisciently oblique. The serenity that drives around the delusional matter of its creational harmonies transpose the peaceful diagram of light upon which the universe was conceived. Everything is quiet and useful, and the sensibility that relies on the conscience of humankind will seek an everlasting kingdom of glory, whose splendor will shine for the centuries to come. 

With splendorous harmonies that seeks the grandiosity of its expansive, salutary and sincere gestures, definitely, The Elders can be considered the most fantastic, profound and gregarious album of Aphotic Apathy, and its excellent level of creative melodies – merging with colorful densities and textures that highlight the brilliance of an unknown universe that has yet to be fully understood – certainly underlines the audacious originality of the artist’s quintessential pragmatism made of intricate and infinite possibilities. 

Like the artist himself complement, “this album will encompass a Space, Ethereal and Dark Ambient atmosphere that showcases the Elders life in the way they conduct themselves as Creators.”

The final album available in Aphotic Apathy’s Bandcamp page is Paradise. This record was released on April, 30, 2016 – after the longest gap between this project’s albums, almost eleven months had passed since its predecessor – and has eleven tracks:  1) Journey; 2) Arrival; 3) Descent; 4) Uncharted; 5) Passage; 6) Hope; 7) Dazed; 8) Monument; 9) Aphotic; 10) Debris; 11) Advent; with nefarious and delusional passages, the album rescues the basic principles, the most underlying, subjective and inherent elements of the artist’s style, but with a more neutral detachment from its own projective reality: an ubiquitous sound, sinister contrivances, dense and slow atmospheres, opaque, but elegant and dispersive harmonious expansions, soft and lethargic melodies, are all perfectly entangled and combined to deliver a dilated tissue of somnolent, but cohesive sonorous dilapidations, that slowly reveal the exoskeleton of distant and singular personal symphonies, that rests peacefully within the sensitivity of an interior and pale planet.   

An exceedingly beautiful and captivating album, Paradise is also a serene – though relatively mordacious – gathering of melodies, that will reinstate over the diluted perceptions of your conscience a whole new galaxy of future memories, upon which the music shall elevate the graceful allegories of an infinite and laborious solitude, that is eager to understand the grandiosity of its own genuine and visionary artistry. 

Definitely a captivating, lucid and more sober space ambient album, Paradise delivers a conjuncture of renitent, but glorious harmonies, whose serenity expands a molecule of light throughout an empty universe corroded by sorrow and despair, that can liberate all degrading desires that reinforces the deliberative insolence of human existence. Despite its unusual simplicity, this album has an imponderable and effectively urgent integrity, that revolves around the sensibilities of its own impeccable creative standards, closing with discreet and sublime splendor a superb and original space odyssey, that certainly has aggregated with its audacious and horizontal authenticity a whole new paradigm of creational possibilities within the genre. Without any fear of being equivocated, Paradise is probably one of the most fascinating, singular and diffusive albums of Aphotic Apathy’s discography. 

The Sevastopol is one of Aphotic Apathy’s albums deleted from his Bandcamp page. There is also an unofficial album, titled Predators, available on YouTube. 

Well, this is it. Basically, what is known about Alex Alexander – again, assuming that this is his real name –, the creative force behind Aphotic Apathy, is close to nothing. He is apparently a Florida-based musician, that is involved to a certain degree in another musical projects. His last Aphotic Apathy album was Paradise, that was released almost three years ago. Since then, he hasn’t released anything under this moniker. The first three albums he released in rapid sequence. In March 2015, he released the first two, The Engineers, in March 15, and The Nostromo (retitled Nostromo) in March 30. The Space Jockey was released a few days later, on April 11, and almost two months later, on June 5, The Elders was released. In April of the next year, 2016, Alexander released Paradise, so far the last Aphotic Apathy album. 

It’s improbable the artist will ever release again under this alias, since he has deleted his Soundcloud and Facebook pages, and the long hiatus so far indicates that he probably have lost the interest. I may be wrong, and in this case, I really wish to be deadly equivocated. Aphotic Apathy was a very original musical endeavor, that has aggregated an exceedingly genuine, extraordinary and potentially creative outlook into the genre, delving deeply into the surreal, dense and fascinating, but morbid, nefarious and sinister universes of the Alien and Predator movie franchises, designing for its albums a macabre and agonizing conjuncture of realistically dreadful soundscapes, that certainly can be defined as the most perfect background soundtracks ever created for these stories, that – although were never used in the movies – definitely aggregates a whole new level of afflictive darkness for its mythology and folklore. 


​Wagner

Black metal is one of my favorite musical genres, and always will be. I really can’t recollect precisely when I became an enthusiast of the genre, but it was decades ago. I was introduced to it when I was a teenager – in the mid-nineties – but back then, my favorite genre was death metal. Nevertheless, I grew to be deeply appreciative of black metal, as well as all of its subgenres. So much so, that here you will find everything, from raw black metal, atmospheric black metal and melodic black metal to epic black metal and DSBM. 

For many reasons, I’ve deliberately included on this list of my favorite BM albums only very underground bands, that aren’t really well known, even to the most ardent enthusiasts of the genre. You will notice that I haven’t included on this list albums of “mainstream” bands and artists, like Emperor, Burzum, Gorgoroth, Darkthrone or Mayhem. I have done that deliberately. For many reasons, I’ve became tired of notorious “mainstream” acts of the genre, and I also don’t think they need to be highlighted nor publicized, because everybody that are into the genre knows them. 

But the strongest motive comes from the fact that I developed for a long time now a passion for discovering “new” bands and acts that I refer to as “the underground of the underground”, so to speak – literally, bands and artists that are exceedingly marvelous, but aren’t well known outside a very restricted fan base. Since a lot of them really has formidable albums released, I think it’s always useful to give these bands and artists more visibility. Also, I became a little tired of the “mainstream”, since the vast majority of the groups cited above has completely fallen into a latent sonorous predictability: the bands that are still active keep releasing the same albums time after time, over and over again. In the underground, on the other hand, you can always find something new and interesting, even if it’s an old album, from a band that is no longer active, but fall into the category of a relatively unknown group. Additionally, there are always new, refreshing bands and artists coming out every day, and a lot of them are competent enough to deserve a chance on the spotlight. And new albums from old, veteran bands – that are relatively obscure – that are releasing new material with more or less frequency. 

So, I sincerely hope you find my selection interesting. Be free to emphasize or criticize! The important thing is to maintain black metal – one of the most beautiful genres ever conceived – in constant evidence, ever. 

It’s important to reiterate that the albums selected here are in no particular order. Just because Minas Morgul, by Summoning, is in the first place, and Unbound, by Sargeist, is the last, doesn’t mean that I prefer the first album. Just because I, by Fuath, comes before Arousal, by Donarhall, doesn’t mean that I prefer the Fuath album. The albums are in this order because they just are. I haven’t selected them in order of preference. I love all these albums equally.  

Minas Morgul is a formidable and highly original epic black metal album, with brightly circumspect atmospheric elements, as well as – to a minor degree – neo-folk arrangements, released in 1995, by Austrian band Summoning, which is active since 1993.  

With eleven tracks – Soul Wandering, Lugburz, The Passing of the Grey Company, Morthond, Marching Homewards, Orthanc, Ungolianth, Dagor Bragollach, Through the Forest of Dol Guldur, The Legend of the Master-Ring and Dor Daedeloth –, Minas Morgul is an aggrandizing, genuine and wonderful album, with a splendorous sound reminiscent of epic battles, medieval times, chivalry, loyalty, deposed kings and lost realms. The sensible, elusive guitar lines, the dream-like nostalgia harmonies, the glorious melodies evocative of once iridescent kingdoms forgotten in the dust of time, are precisely combined altogether to deliver a work of incomparable sonorous artistry, that deserves to be appreciated for decades to come, and to be passed away to the younger generations fond of the subgenre. This album is exceedingly marvelous, being amazingly excellent from the beginning until the end. Song after song after song, this awesome masterpiece delivers one of the best exemplars of epic black metal you will ever be able to appreciate in your life!    

While at the beginning, this work can sound rough and harsh, being an exponentially virulent, indulgent, aggressive, obscure and sinister album – that flirts discreetly with DSBM –, progressively, the record reveals more soft and versatile nuances, that gradually reveals a more complex and ambitious pattern of artistry. 

Anti is a band from Germany, that was active from 2003 to 2014, and regrouped in 2018. The Insignificance of Life was originally released in 2006, with six tracks: Nothing, Landscape in Minor, Invocation, Farewell (Escape into Beyond), Zero Point and Mourning Soul. A posterior re-issue had the additional tracks: Perished, Death into Life and Longing for the End. Despite the lugubrious atmosphere of the album, the musical framework also carries on a beautiful poetic density, reflexive melodies and intonations, and at certain times, very philosophic and sensible undertones. As an album that begins aggressively, but slowly becomes more humane, deeply existential and melancholic, The Insignificance of Life is in no rush to reveal itself as an imponderable and unexpected masterpiece to its audience. On the contrary, its latent, but patient atmosphere proves to be another one of its many qualities. 

Despite being relatively unknown, Fleurety is a veteran Norwegian black metal act, active since the early nineties (so it is a reminiscent of the classic Norwegian scene). Although their sound evolved along the years to be more progressive and avant-garde – with some brief stints of power metal discreetly placed onto their musical atmosphere as well – they started playing traditional black metal. This marvelous album was originally released in 1995, and already displays the group flirting with more melodic, versatile and flexible musical elements, although maintaining its creative nucleus ostensibly engraved on lunar BM ferocity. 

Almost forty-five minutes long, the record has five relatively extensive tracks: Fragmenter av en fortid, En skikkelse i horisonten, Hvileløs?, Englers piler har ingen brodd and Fragmenter av en fremtid. With the predominance of poetic, though somber and melancholic harmonies, Min Tid Skal Komme is a beautiful and graceful work of art, that definitely has on the apex of its consecrated virtuosity a lucid and proverbial sense of originality, that enabled this fantastic and gracefully consistent BM act to conceive a very singular and precious work of art.

…Medieval Art, originally released in 1998, is the only album by French black metal band Azerlath. A splendorous, vivid and fantastic work – with perfect guitar lines sustaining a graceful horizon of versatile and vivaciously resonant harmonies – the record has eleven tracks: The March of the Lost Souls, Nightside Aura, The Leaf, Melody of the Forest, Snow Covered Land, Svart, Northward, After the Rain, The Stream and the Lake, An Ode for a Frozen Night and When All Will End. 

Flirting with virtuous melodies and ascendant rhapsodies of graceful cohesion, the general style displayed by the band are a colorful and proverbial convergence of organic elements, exploding on floating waves of synchronic cosmic dissonances, that perfectly revolves around a lucid conjuncture of preponderant qualities, consistently inserted as a sensitive layout to mostly beautiful and poetic songs. 

Largely drawing its magnificent tonalities from the expansive grace of its creative vortex, …Medieval Art is a proficient, mature and fabulous record, that definitely has consecrated the genre to a more vigorous, robust and genuine sense of artistry, elevating the standards of black metal to a splendidly dynamic, elegant and sophisticated scale.

To Lay Like Old Ashes was the last album released by Austere, an Australian black metal act active for approximately five years, between 2005 and 2010. A formidable, elegant and versatile record, this work has passionate and consistent melodies, that flirts extensively with DSBM, which explains it’s graciously melancholic, macabre and depressive nature. Exceedingly exceptional at some points, the record, almost fifty-five minutes long, has six relatively extensive tracks: Down, To Fade With The Dusk, This Dreadful Emptiness, To Lay Like Old Ashes, Just For A Moment... and Coma II. 

The first song, To Fade With The Dusk – Down is just a brief intro – is absolutely marvelous, and embodies the fragile and fractured, but renitent and sagacious essence that drove the band’s astute, lucid and creative musicality, for the entirety of its short career, but more prominently on this album. With precise guitar lines, and a sensible perception of the spectral void that surrounds the human race, the song revitalize with sincere and flexible splendor the tempestuous dissonances and the tragic abysses that are inherent to our existential disgrace. The last song, the monumental and epic Coma II, features derisive and depressant guitar lines, that obliterates the emptiness that beholds its complacent serenity, with the hyperbolic consecration of a fatalist calmness, that revolves around a despondent perception of reality.  

With abundant and dilated virtues, that converges to a highly concentrated and energized – but dark – musical atmosphere, Austere displays a pungent, yet profoundly humane style, which makes this record to be a gracefully unique work of art, that definitely standardizes its singularity by the elegant proclivities and unexpected versatility displayed all the way through. 

Under The Moonlight Rising is an album released recently, on November 11. Work of an atmospheric black metal act named Koldissey – personal project of an Australian musician better known by the alias of Baelathvan, which is the creative force behind another BM endeavors like Ascensions Fall and Farrore –, this record is relatively concise. Only thirty-six minutes long, it has seven tracks: Equipoise, Under the Moonlight Rising, Dream Scars, Koldyssey (interlude), Lights Vestige, Night Shades and Ascent of the Black Moon. 

A singular record, whose melodies rely primarily on extensive, diluted and somber atmospheres, Under The Moonlight Rising is almost a collection of melancholic serenades, whose impulsive and primordial daydreams conducts into the everlasting fog of a delusional existence an indulgent and desperate search for lost forgotten realms – whose glorious past was filled by the solicitude of heroic and brave virtues –, that were unmercifully reduced to nothing, by the indifferent dust of history. In Under The Moonlight Rising, the artist somehow seems predisposed to revitalize in the rapture of its monumental harmonies the fugacious splendor that is no longer present. Since the world has fallen on the dubious darkness of lugubrious shadows, all that we have is harmonies that maybe the only reminiscent of those splendorous times. 

Atmospheric black metal from Hungary, Witcher is active since 2010, and Boszorkánytánc was released the following year, in 2011. With a great emphasis on atmosphere – conceived in subtle, though masterly slower, nefarious and somber tonalities – the vocals are grounded on traditional black metal, while instrumentally the duo explores more dense, gratuitous and perceptive melodies, with post-classical influences. While their musical layout can be inarguably defined as very simple, the songs are beautiful and consistent, and their method is ostensibly shaped in a coherent, versatile and graceful style. 

If you are into atmospheric black metal, you may not be impressed at all by this work, but undoubtedly, their qualities cannot be denied. They know how to elaborate, sustain and expand dispersive, but at the same time allegorical, diluted and elegant dark symphonies, that are much more grounded on melancholy and sentimental poetry, than generic sinister despondencies. This work have soul and sensibility, and Witcher deals with the general limitations of the genre with flexible virtuosity. Originally conceived as a demo, Boszorkánytánc is forty-two minutes long, so it can be defined – taking the extension into consideration – as a full length album.  

An exciting, splendorous and marvelous work, Nature Stays Silent is an album released this year, in March 30, by Swiss epic and melodic black metal act Cân Bardd. A very extensive record – seventy minutes long – the work has eight tracks: Introduction, My Ancestors, An Evolving Painting, Méditation Glaciale, Underwater, Océan, Abîme and A Gift for Nature. 

With formidable melodies, and amazingly overwhelming epic elements, exceedingly grounded in mythology and folklore, the style of Cân Bardd is indebted to an intuitive sense of musical grandeur, stylish majesty and rapture, that makes each of its masterful symphonies a monumental tale of everlasting realms of splendor, full of sensibility and grandiloquent artistry. With kings being deposed, chevaliers rescuing the honor of lost dynasties, and ancient Celtic tribes being remembered by the vitality of its salutary resistance against exterior enemies, the music of Cân Bardd – abundant on Viking and folk metal elements as well – is a vivid story of passionate and sentimental nostalgia, whose horizon contemplates the graceful eternity of splendid lost times. 

With a poetic and noble sound, the virtuosity of Cân Bardd is everywhere on this album. Consecrating to the subgenres of epic and melodic black metal a monumental quality that becomes its most valuable triumph, whose sound reverberates the intensity of its grace by the ethereal dimensions of its marvelous, poetic and lucid harmonies, Nature Stays Silent is a wonderful sonorous journey throughout a marvelous world of bards, hereditary kingdoms, heroic tradition and sincere grace, completely devoid of unnecessary superficialities and vanities. Definitely, it’s a majestic album, that aggregates fantastic perspectives into these wonderful subgenres.     

Released in 2011, The Light That Dwells In Rotten Wood is the second full-length album by American melodic black metal band Falls of Rauros, active since 2005. A graceful and very interesting work of art, that explores the subtlety of melancholic and depressant harmonies with a severely lugubrious atmosphere – despite the dynamic virtues of their vivacious sonorous layout –, the music of the group is characterized primarily by a dense and virtuous cosmogony of everlasting, but crucially humane despondency. 

With sensational, abrasive, pungent and creative guitar lines, the general pace of the music is calm, mature and serene, but has a profound, dissonant and fatalist glory, reminiscent of indefinite and fantastic landscapes full of gray haze and lost emotional conflicts. All songs on this album are gracefully elegant and imaginative, full of qualitative elements that embrace a consistent and fabulous virtuosity, that easily expands its exceptionally vibrant sensibilities to all the potentialities upon which its vast and intuitive melodies were conceived. Falls of Rauros has on this album a marvelous triumph, that easily manages the strength of its genuine style, full of originality, splendor and furious vitality.  

I, released on February 1st, 2016, is the debut – and so long, only – album by Fuath, an atmospheric black metal project conceived by Scottish musician Andy Marshall. Forty-one minutes long, the record has four extensive tracks: In the Halls of the Hunter, Blood, The Oracle and Spirit of the North. 

With vast, cohesive and exceedingly rapid melodies, highly suggestive of dramatic imagery – like everlasting anthems that echoes in the night, perfunctorily revolving around the conflagration of sinister flames that mysteriously burns surrounded by the infinite darkness of a forest conceived by the drastic loneliness of an unknown isolationist conscience –, the general harmonies of this work were elaborated in objective elegance, consistence and splendor, despite the fact that its passionate subjectivity also consecrates to the imagination a realm of possibilities that wanders around the imperative solitude of a universe lost in the glorious storms of all human despondencies. The guitar lines are exceedingly dynamic, and gives to the listener an impressionistic repertoire of poetic symphonies, that definitely filters the solitary emptiness upon which our ordinary sensibilities are confined. 

Displaying a visceral artistic grandiosity all the way through, I, by Fuath, is a formidable and genuine work, that engraves the singular style of the artist in the listener’s mind with evasive strength. While its pungent and abrasive guitar lines creates a nefarious world of unknown demise, the melodies are crystallized with a gracious beauty, that definitely qualifies this album as a fundamental milestone of the subgenre.     

An album that starts with pungent and aggressive, but moderately restrained and dynamic melodies, driven by torrid and cohesive guitar lines, Arousal was released on September 8, by Donarhall, a melodic and profoundly authorial black metal project by a German musician, known only by the alias of Gnev. 

A very graceful and consistent work – full of melancholic and splendid melodies –, its impressive how Donarhall evolved musically, since the time Gnev released the project’s first album, Misanthrope (that I’ve personally evaluated, as you can read here), in January 2017, which was, indeed, a tasteless and ordinary work, almost to the point of mediocrity, pervasively marked by sameness, generic passages and sonorous commonalities. 

Forty minutes long, Arousal is more concise and dynamic – though more stylistically ambitious and mature –, despite the fact that has only four long tracks: Drowsiness, Incubus, Apathy and Lethargy. Although the titles are incredibly suggestive, and they do transmit the respective feelings upon which each song is named – except, of course, for Incubus – this Donarhall album is anything but tedious, conventional or homogeneous. Despite the fact that the melodies sounds mostly evasive, cynic, diluted and somber, there is an organic vitality hidden in the harmonies, that makes the sound exceedingly beautiful and fascinating. With a robust creative strength and a genuinely elegant audacity, this album really sounds as a virtuous and relevant artistic triumph. It’s an indication that Gnev is evolving as a musician, and definitely has potential to surprise his audience with more excellent work in the future, the way he did on this magnificent album.  

The Eternal Darkness I Adore is the third album by Italian black metal band Kult, released in September 14, by German label Folter Records. Forty-four minutes long, the record has nine tracks: Intro, The Eternal Darkness I Adore, Pandemonium, Black Drapes, Reaping The Flock, Canticle Of Thorns, Hopestrangler, Gruesome Portrait and Devourer Of The Night.

A marvelously good, raw, traditional black metal album – though with a high fidelity production of superior quality, that makes the sound more clear and defined –, The Eternal Darkness I Adore is an intelligent, audacious and impeccable work, that very subtlety, plays with crust punk elements in a few select passages, but always with latent mordacity, never losing sight of its profoundly sinister, excruciating and lancinating BM stylish grandiloquence. 

With a brutal and aggressive sound – abundant on abrasive and tempestuous guitar lines –, that concomitantly remains precisely elegant and rapturous, the music developed by Kult is thoroughly expansive and consistent. Definitely, this album can be qualified as mature, sensible and sophisticated traditional black metal, conceived by the strongest virtues of an authorial, genuine and punctual creativity.  

Atmospheric black metal from Ukraine, Severoth is a project active for more than a decade now – since 2007 –, and When The Night Falls…, released this year, is the most recent work from this marvelous one man musical endeavor. 

With incisive, but soft and poetic harmonies, When The Night Falls… is a group of beautiful symphonies, aligned altogether in a mosaic of insurgent magnificence. Despite being a little less versatile than other acts in the genre, Severoth has a remarkable style, and a gracious and cohesive musicality. With a delicate splendor, that flirts discreetly with the most somber conflagrations of human nature, this work features prominently dissonant and almost folkloric keyboards, that masterly conceives colorful worlds of melancholic and petrified solitude, whose terribly ancient, but visceral disappointment towards existence drives despair to an ultimate darkness, that will be forever lost in the sands of time. 

A truly poetic and profound work, When The Night Falls is a glorious enchantment, that every enthusiast of atmospheric BM will enormously enjoy and appreciate.  

Despite the name, Utstøtt is an American black metal project, from the state of Oregon. Another album released this year – this one very recently, on October 15 –, Járnviðr is sixty-five minutes long, and has six extensive tracks: Járnviðr, Sköll og Hati, Dunkelheit (Burzum Cover), Angrboða, Fenrir and Frykt. With an interesting style, displaying an aggressive, lugubrious and more traditional black metal – though intelligently, but discreetly, without excesses, blended with epic and Viking metal elements – the music of Utstøtt is a formidable reinvigoration of the genre’s old school qualities, adorned with more lucid, singular and elegant harmonies. 

The aggressiveness and the rapid pace of the songs are outstanding qualities on this work. The fluid and dynamic features of the melodies – beautifully consecrated by refined, but pervasively abrasive guitar lines – creates an organic structure within the songs that makes them exceedingly vivacious, cohesive and alive, as a colorful diagram of planetary symphonies receiving the elementary conditions of reality in a more proverbial and distinct configuration of sensibilities. With a formidably original outlook, and a quintessential creative visionary disposition, the general style of Utstøtt in Járnviðr is simply sensational, splendorous, and filled with an inimitable grandiosity. 

The cover of Burzum, Dunkelheit, deserves to be highlighted. Although too similar to the original, this version is spectacularly beautiful, and comes charged with a sentiment of nostalgia that definitely will remind you the glorious days of the genre. Displaying a vastly genuine and inventive ordeal, Járnviðr, by Utstøtt, is a magnificent, consistent and very peculiar album, that proves all the way through – in every minute of it – why deserves to be recognized as one of the best black metal records ever released. 

Last, but not least, Unbound is another relatively recent album. Released by W.T.C.Productions on October 11 – the fifth work by Finnish legendary black metal act Sargeist –, Unbound is a furious and lancinating musical effort, with ten tracks: Psychosis Incarnate, To Wander the Night's Eternal Path, The Bosom of Wisdom and Madness, Death's Empath, Hunting Eyes, Her Mouth is an Open Grave, Unbound, Blessing of the Fire-Bearer, Wake of the Compassionate and Grail of the Pilgrim. 

With a wrathful and ravenous style, in the best raw old school traditional layer – despite the high quality production values –, the heavy and dense atmosphere, the nefarious melodies and the vociferating, but abrasive, meticulous and harmonious guitar lines conceives a panorama of digressive musical stability that perfectly delivers its sonorous cosmogony as a continuous conjuncture of sinister symphonies, compromised with the drastic execution of an everlasting doom. With songs greatly configured in a simple, but dynamic layout that explores the melodic possibilities of its lugubrious tonalities, Unbound not only honors the genre in all of its somber perspectives, but definitely establishes a new horizon of creative and spectacular splendor into the stylistic diagram of its expansive, majestic and grandiose realm of lost anger. Despite its dark and impenitent fury, the songs are marvelously refined, and displays a consistent essence that summarily revolves around the legacy of its own artistic principles. The album sounds impeccably conceived in the afflictive abysses of the human conscience, and with all the vitality of its colossal and mordacious strength, is perfectly sensational, from the beginning until the end.   

With exceedingly rapid and aggressive harmonies, definitely, devoted BM enthusiasts will enjoy the implacable and hazardous fury of Unbound, that abundantly dilacerates with insidious devastation each dissonant dimension of its brutal conception of a universe where chaos, darkness and glory rules indistinctly, for the complete demise of the human race. 

Well, this is it – at least for now! I hope you have enjoyed my personal selection of favorite black metal albums. You may not have liked everything that is here, but remember, it’s my list. Nevertheless, I will definitely love to read your opinions – positive or negative – about it. Thank you for your attention, and see you soon in the next list!  

​Wagner

Over the course of Dunk! history Zottegem has seen and heard some mesmerizing post rock bands. Inspired by forerunners like Godspeed, Explosions and Mogwai a wide array of acts have pushed the "typical" sound over the meadow. Yet, in my personal opinion, Dunk is no place for smashers like that, not only because they're too expensive for an intimate festival but also because the tickets will sell-out in no time to people who don't really care about the other bands, thus leaving the loyal Dunk! audience in the cold. No, Dunk is the place for Russian Circles, God Is An Astronaut, Mono and This Will Destroy You. Everything bigger than that can go do Cactus Festival or Werchter. 

Besides, what makes Dunk! such a stand-out is the vast amount of overall quality which turns a young, nervous band like The End Of The Ocean, Radare or Spoiwo into a world class performance act, let's not forget about that. Undoubtedly, in 2019 there will be plenty of bands with that classic post rock sound. Perhaps one or two of the previously mentioned bands will make a glorious return, since I read that they're both working on new material. Same goes for Cecilia::Eyes and Astodan. With those last two, we remain on Belgian territory and since Amenra climbed the Dunk! stage we all know what Belgians are capable of. 

Should Amenra return? That question has been on a lot of people's lips in the past few years. If that means that CHVE and Syndrome do solo performances at the forest stage I'm all in. Besides, an acoustic full-band set at the forest stage would also be wonderful. I'd actually rather see that: their version of 'Het Dorp' in the forest. The goosebumps would be tremendous, no doubt. 

Since we moved to the forest stage really early in this article, I see some neat possibilities there. Calm, soothing ambient sounds at night, not too loud but loud enough for everybody in the area to dream away on meandering soundscapes. People spread out on the forest floor, sailing on the drones of Biosphere, Eluvium or Helios. In fact, you don't even have to go abroad to find some decent ambient acts. Just ask Ashtoreth or Stratosphere to host one evening in the forest and it will be magical, I swear to whatever you believe in. Or have Dave Grohl play a thirty minutes drones set, that would also be fucking sweet.

It doesn't always have to be calm and soothing. A while ago I read that there's something new from I Am Waiting For You Last Summer. They were a fun surprise a few years back. Dance music and post rock can go pretty well together. With that, acts like Tycho, Yppah, Jon Hopkins and Nicolas Jaar/Darkside could bring a state of ecstasy to the big tent. So can Worriedaboutsatan who have proved that in the past. And why not, back in the woods, invite a mindbending psychedelic rock band like Ozric Tentacles and dance the night away. It's rock and it's instrumental, that counts. Dutch proggers Kong also answer to those conditions and their career is far from over. I really really really really really like to see that happen, preferable of course in their quadrophonic set up, which will bring them back on the pedestal I've placed them on all those years ago.

​And since we're on the subject of being instrumental and rocking, why not let the inventor of the forest stage make a glorious return to Dunk!. Some years ago, Eric occupied the woods and with that Thisquietarmy changed the whole atmosphere of the festival. I recently witnessed his full-band performance at Antwerp Music City. If anyone can outperform the seismic shock of Telepathy last year, it's Thisquietarmy The Band. In his turn, Eric could invite Aidan Baker over and have an evening-filling program with Hypnodrone Ensemble, Caudal and Nadja. Of course, Telepathy is also very welcome to return, so I'd say: "who not both?". 

Heaviness. Are we ready for post black metal yet? Deafhaven? Sólstafir? Alcest? Drawn Into Descent? Little by little blast-beats and screams have been infiltrating the line-up, so who knows. Then again, I'm not sure if that's what the Dunk audience is waiting for. Perhaps they like their heaviness a bit slower but still crushing like a steamroller. That takes me to Melvins or Neurosis or Cult Of Luna or something by former Isis members. Here in Belgium that would open the door for Charnia, Hæster or Angakok. Crushing riffs that smash skulls to pieces. Or why not go wild with some sludgy stoner grunge rock. There too is plenty to choose from, with Belgian nutcrackers Tangled Horns being the first one that comes to mind. Perhaps they could take over where Steak Number Eight left.

Throughout the years, Dunk Festival evolved from a post rock festival to an allround atmospheric music event. There is plenty of variation to be found. Even (dark) jazz has a place there, with Dirk Serries and Tomas Jarmyr paving the way for bands like Radare and Bolt to shine and charm. That brings me to Dale Cooper Quartet and the Dictaphones, Bohren Und Der Club Of Gore, A Sun Amissa or The Thing With Five Eyes. I have no idea who is when available to be where but some jazz would be neat indeed. 

Yet, as we all know, Dunk's solid core is still post rock. I guess their own label will be represented with bands like Coastlands, Tides Of Man, Stories From The Lost and that mysterious Girih entity. Perhaps Celestial Wolves or Doomina will make a comeback, having a new album and all. That's all perfectly fine by me, but if I could make some suggestions, invite The Evpatoria Report, Glasgow Coma Scale, Toundra and Jet Plane. Plus, perhaps give Wanheda a shot. They're getting somewhere and with the vintage Dunk sound, all of these would be pure bliss.
​
​There are truckloads of decent post rock band to be found, more than enough to fill a thousand stages at a thousand Dunk festivals. I'm sure that the organisation will come up with some classics, some surprises and a lot of excellence. But, do you know what I'd secretly like, even more than seeing someone finally propose to his girlfriend on stage: a guided tour through the pressing plant. I think it takes guts and a massive pair of testicles to throw an idea like that into motion, especially in these rough financial times. Building a pressing plant was a serious risk and a tremendous undertaking and I'd like to see it in action. Don't you?

So anyway, before I crawl my tired ass to bed: there can and probably will be some amazing bands appearing on the line-up in the next months. I can't wait to go back to the fields of Zottegem and watch the splendor of music turn everyday strangers into close friends. Because that's pretty much what Dunk is all about: they true spirit of the festivals, as Woodstock or Jazz Bilzen initially were intended. Sweet get-togethers with sweet people and sweet music in one of Belgium's greenest environments. I'm looking forward to that. 


Serge

A selection by Wagner Hertzog 

There are a lot of albums, in several distinct genres, from several different categories, periods and places, that are enormously underrated and overtly unappreciated, never achieving the level of recognition and fame they certainly deserve. This mainly occurs for one reason: most of them come from underground bands and artists, that are – in the vast majority of the cases –, virtually unknown, being appreciated only by a handful of enthusiasts or by a loyal cult following. Other artists, like some Japanese musicians that integrate this list, are relatively well-known, but only in their country of origin, being strange to audiences abroad. 

Regardless of the motives about why these albums haven’t achieved the degree of notoriety they deserve, I’ve selected here twelve records in no particular order or genre whatsoever – on the contrary, here you will find a good diversity, from atmospheric black metal and dark ambient, to neo-folk and new age symbolic symphonies, to minimalist piano pieces and post-classic Japanese music – that, at least in my opinion, deserves a higher level of evaluation and appreciation from the critical musical establishment, and mostly, from the general public; at least, a lot more appreciation of what they initially had amassed, giving them the opportunity to reach audiences that aren’t familiar or haven’t being introduced to their respective works. I hope you enjoy at least some of them, and spread the ones you like the most to your musical friends. Let’s make music – these albums included – to be dispersed, publicized and heard everywhere!

Forty minutes long, with seven tracks – Ecstasy, Calmness At Stress, Confounded,Pt.1, Confounded,Pt.2, Prowl In Reverie, Life Era and Regret –, this acoustic neo-folk ambient work is strongly suggestive of calmer abysses, low temperatures and digressive disdains over the painful, but sincere vicissitudes of life. It’s easy to imagine a reflexive and distant existence terraforming over the planetary solitude of infinite eras, while you dream peacefully over the sonorous contemplative ordeal that will come to your mind. A salutary nostalgia flirts with the end of a melancholic afternoon, that anticipates in a soft rain all the inspiring timeless sagacity of an energy that slowly dissipates itself from within. Certainly, you will find this album relaxing, tranquil and overtly peaceful. Impossible not to like it!  

A curiously efficient and dense black metal work – with predominantly slow harmonies – that instills in the listener an efficiently intrusive, but patient emotional exhilaration, this group from Sweden to this day is vastly unknown. This album is apparently from 2009, and I sincerely don’t know if the band is still in activity. Nevertheless, their music is amazingly skilled, their exceedingly powerful creativity ostensibly breaks the ordinary standards of the genre, and their harmonies are well-crafted and original, but at the same time loyal to the most profound references of underground black metal. With vastly lugubrious intonations and a sinister sonority that drives the melodies to a dark horizon of distinctive frivolities, I think you can say Into the Darkness of My Soul is an excellent contemporary exemplar of true-to-the-roots black metal, with no imperfections at all to be highlighted.  

Melodic black metal that seems to flirt with the epic and atmospheric subgenres at some extent. Vibrant, dense and conspicuously sinister – although at the same time kind, familiar and gentle –, the sound of Dying Stars’ Walking Across The World is a superb, indefinite and infinite stream of ghostly demise, spreading its monumental, serene, minimalized and diverse artistry throughout a panorama of primordial lancinating beauty. Forty four minutes long, the record has nine tracks: Madness Of Nuclear World, Where Eternal Silence, Dying Star, In Captive Oblivion, Ghost Of Karpaty, From Endless Space, Downpour and The Mist. Its fantastic harmonies flows directly into the eventful kingdoms of an imaginary existence, where eternity waits for the shadows of your soul to merge into the twilights of a magnificent horizon, that has on the conscience of an everlasting splendor the fatalist answer for all enigmas of life. Its poetic and reflexive undertones gives a glorious philosophic color to this beautiful record.  

Amazingly sinister, unexpected and anxiously dark ambient from Norway, Svartsinn – a relatively well-known name in this vastly infamous underground genre, with several albums released – is the creative vehicle for Jan Roger Pettersen. Fifty-one minutes long, Traces of Nothingness has eight tracks: Traces Of Nothingness, No Passage to the Innermost..., Lost in Reveries, Misanthropic Odyssey, Through Apathetic Eyes, All The Colours Are Fading, ...But The Fire Burns No More and Emptiness Is Form. Empirically dwelling throughout the dark vastness of a very personal universe of agonizing emptiness, this album, despite having the sonority somewhat typical for the genre, has a lucid degree of creativity, that displays an excellent degree of originality. With an exceedingly somber atmosphere, and a nervous placidity that anticipates the everlasting shadows of something unknown lurking in the density of lugubrious immortal fears, Traces of Nothingness is a delightful, but dreadful work of art, that masterly exhibits in impeccable form the most fundamental and extraordinary qualities of the genre, elevated in an exponential scale. 

Effervescent, delirious, glamorous, poetically rapturous and violently conspicuous black metal with exceedingly perfect harmonies, Dråpsnatt is a group from Sweden that it’s difficult to know if it’s still active or not. Hymner till undergången was apparently released in 2014, and has nine tracks: En Ensam Sol Går ner, Arvssynd, Dråpsnatt, Mannen I Min Spegel, Somna In, Ve Er, Tonerna De Klinga, En Besvuren Plats and Gästen. With a sinister, but splendorous sound that comes from the shadows, spectral guitar lines resounds the fury of an eternity of tormented wrath and suffering. The virulent creative and energetic sagacity of this marvelous BM act certainly eviscerates a sonorous compendium of miraculous artistry, whose sensitive level of originality deserves to be highlighted as a fundamental cornerstone of the genre. Undoubtedly, this will be one of the best BM albums that you will ever have the pleasure to hear in your life. 

Drinking Songs, by Matt Elliot, is a simple, but beautiful album. Calm, serene, relaxing, circumspect – eager to understand the introspective subtleties upon which its harmonies devour the plenitude of an intrusive conscience – with melodies that drives the sentimental gravities of the abundant frivolities of the heart to a distant, but definite melancholic paradise, this graceful album reiterates its deceptive quest for a silent anxiety, reverberating the latitudes of its own quietness. While a little slow, the album definitely has a charming, dense and proverbial quintessential mood, that invites the listener to dive deep into the creative elements of its own sorrow; with a finishing hour cabaret vibe that converges to a distinctive nostalgia, where you remember everything you want to forget, Drinking Songs is an album that has an atmosphere of its own, comparable to the fragrant alcoholic vapors of an early Sunday morning, that will never end until someone bargains his own soul to be able to buy more drinks. 

With all its versatile virtuosity, but deeply concentrated style, Scenery is an album of lucid piano sonatas and quasi-ballads, strongly conceived with solid improvisations and magical short notes, designed to inspire happiness. With six tracks – It Could Happen To You, I Want To Talk About You, Early Summer, Willow Weep For Me, Autumn Leaves and Scenery – the album is reminiscent of piano bars with a lot of cigarette smoke, fulfilled from top to bottom by an atmosphere immersed in sweet nostalgia, and ingratiates itself in the jazz and blues aura upon which its music was seemingly influenced.

A very melodic, delicate and serene album, Mist, by Thom Brennan, is a very dispersive atmospheric piece, whose sound seems shrouded in mist and secrecy: an imponderable and enigmatic sonorous journey towards the graveyard of a restless conscience, this record is an elegant and dense ambient accomplishment, that delivers an enthusiastic, but smoothly diluted calmness to the embrace of existence. A very consistent and dramatic album, with long interludes and vast dynamic sequences whose discreet expansion resonates over the cosmic infinity of its gracious and lucid, but somewhat solitary sensibilities, Mist, by Thom Brennan, is a deep dive into the horizon of an everlasting wakefulness, whose proverbial grace elaborates in the density of its sensational premises the resolution for a symphony that contains a majestic element of eternity at the core of its notes.  

Another album that envisions and delivers a formidable sense of splendorous calmness, Sunday Morning Peace, by Jonn Serrie, is a virtuous and systematic dive into the infinity of a glorious and affable eternity, involved by a dense and sober sonorous tenacity. With a serenity that seems spectacularly vivid, but at the same time crystallized by the sensibilities of its flexible atmosphere of melodic profoundness, this almost one hour long album has only five very extensive tracks: the title track Sunday Morning Peace, Maiden Voyage, The Enlightened Path,
Breath of the Valley and Sea Mist. While its laborious virtuosity really encapsulates the surreal world that ingratiates itself in the vicinities of an harmonious realm of marvelous relaxation, the expansive dimensional tones that disperse its atoms through the vastness of its musical cadences are astonishingly effective. With a gracious mobility that enables its gradual rhythmic flow to surpass its own extemporal fluidity, Sunday Morning Peace, by Jonn Serrie, is definitely a wonderful artistic ordeal, that anticipates in the genuine possibilities of its own intrinsic elements the glorious musical narrative of the conception of a personal, but familiar universe.    

A discreet, minimalist and very organic new age album, whose main vitality relies on the happier, fluid and vivid tonalities of its sensible and gracious sonorous anatomy, the simple, yet reverberating sense of continuity present on this record – filled with nature-inspired sounds and overflowing colorful melodies delivered in waves of subtle harmonious fragrances, Green is one of those very distinct and peculiar authorial works, whose creative audacities really conceive a somewhat experimental, eccentric and original set of standards. At the highlight of its imperative synergy, Green certainly can be considered a proverbial piece of lucid and insightful grace, whose slow, but symmetric balance definitely conceives a dense, introspective and carefully elaborated universe of its own.   

A more proverbial and melancholic sinister piece, Piano Nights, by Bohren & Der Club Of Gore, is a delightful minimalist experience, that recognizes in the lugubrious atmosphere of its slow monumental cadences the lucid and dramatic possibilities of its somber serenades. With the insightful cholera of despondency, the music seems to departure from a world of infinite midnight, eager to extend the agony of its melodies over all dimensional waves of existence. With a cohesive use of silence and space between notes, the style of Bohren & Der Club Of Gore reflects a solitary, erudite and sensible musical arrangement, that also impresses by the virtue of its simplicity. With the silent grace of its lurid, but somewhat hyperbolic notes, this album reinstates over the sagacity of its latent premise the slow acerbic rhythm of life, as the rain falls somewhere, inside the scenery of a conformist doom.  

With beautiful harmonies, restrained to a modest, but elegant layer of space and time, In the Mood for love already explains in the title the grandiosity of its purpose. This formidable, eloquent, suggestive and delicate masterpiece is a sentimental symphony that reads in the cosmogony of its own discreet expansive omniscience the iridescent structure of its ascendant patterns. A melancholic serenade that evades the request for a modest ocean of incisively tempestuous calmness, this album has a sophisticated and expressively dense musical ambition, whose strength lies objectively in the dense diagram of its passionately intricate serenity, projecting the anatomic balance of the sound towards a sensitive spectacle of marvelous infinity. 

Koan Sound is a British electronic music duo, composed of musicians Jim Bastow and Will Weeks (don’t confuse with Koan, an electronic musical act from Russia, upon which I wrote here). Recently, I’ve heard their four songs EP, Forgotten Myths, that for a certain amount of time has been calling me, out of nefarious curiosity. Despite its brutal conciseness, the work is only a few minutes long, the EP is certainly more or less intriguing, although, to a certain extent, you instantly recognize ordinary patterns on their music, regardless of their natural and incontestable talent. Nevertheless, all the elements in these four songs are very well arranged altogether, and dissipate a dispersive, but quiet and consistent aura of majestic splendor right through it, envisioned by a sagacity that instinctively drives the harmonies. The duo definitely has an interesting signature sound – with a more fatalist, but delicate and gracious infatuation, so to speak – that keeps the melodies popping up. There is a vague, but latent sincerity in the music that lines up with their dissolute introspective universe that easily acknowledges its profound impetus.   

Right away, it’s easy to notice their references, since it becomes a little obvious that they have been influenced by genres like EDM, chillstep and electronica, but they effortlessly try to sculpt in the razorblade chain of their expansive compositions their own personal style, with successful composure and mordacity. 

With only four songs – Strike, Sentient, the title track Forgotten Myths and View From Above – there is not too much to be highlighted here. These are very good songs, but my main curiosity was hit when I discovered the duo’s existence while searching for the other Koan two-piece. For individuals who really love electronic music, Forgotten Myths it’s a decent possibility. Of course, don’t expect anything glamorous, rapturous, nor extraordinary from this work. It’s a modest promise, but it will entertain your senses, though, although I speculate that Koan Sound is only beginning their journey. 


Wagner 

bandcamp

Koan is a Russian electronic experimental musical duo, consisting of musicians Daniel Roeth and William Grey (these are probably only pseudonyms, since on their official FB page it is informed that William Grey’s real name is Vladimir Sedov), who are veterans active in the underground scene since the early nineties. 

Despite their somewhat modest fan base, Koan is definitely one of my favorite electronic musical acts of all time. Their sound is majestically vibrant, ostensibly original, genuinely proficient, and powerfully exhilarating, with dense and hyperbolic melodies that transcend and redefine all the extraordinary possibilities of its groundbreaking, but consistent expansive essence. With sensible, but complex intuitive cadences that reacts over the waves of harmonies that engulf the soul of its implosive expressive musical features, the sound of Koan makes extensive use of superimposed notes, that creates abrasive sonorous effects over its intricate continuous densities. And you certainly can feel that for yourself, especially if you hear the album I consider their masterpiece, the astounding, fantastic and fabulous The Way of One. 

With a glorious, energetic and effective sonority that runs over the excesses of forgotten universes lost over a billion consciences that sleep in the existential grace of its pungent veracity, this album is a masterpiece that will completely reset your standards in the genre. An expressive audacity that runs over a universe of dispersive and dense harmonies, The Way of One delivers the laborious synergy of unrestrained inventiveness, generating to the relief of its exceptional musical tonalities a new principle of virtuous and organic originality, that anticipates a whole new category for genuine electronic art. On the playful allegories of the colorful universe envisioned by the grandiosity of this monumental eulogy of artistry, the dispersive elements of the genre are astoundingly agglutinated altogether, to reimagine the transcendental grace of life, reinstating over the vicinities of its latent, but powerful creativity a new dimension of lucid catharsis. That being punctuated, it’s more easy to assert that The Way of One anticipates in the marvelous cosmogony of its creative anatomy all the vast possibilities dormant within the genre, but perfunctorily displayed on this album, in the fertile vivacity of its dream-like everlasting atmosphere of sensibility and cohesiveness. Although I think it’s unfair to emphasize my favorite tracks – since the entire album is thoroughly excellent –, I must write them down, to relieve my conscience. The first two, Alone in Canoe and Eagle's Tale, as well as the last two, Uenuku and Peta-Owi Hankeshni!, in my modest opinion, are the highlights of this album, and deserve to be deeply appreciated by the exceptional poetic virtues of their sensible sonorous overpowering restlessness. 

Another album that I think deserves to be highlighted is Argonautica. Not as marvelous as The Way of One – at least in my personal evaluation –, nevertheless, this album deserves its place of honor. Exceedingly extensive as well, being seventy-nine minutes long, this record contains the following tracks: Orpheus and Eurydice, Lost Lyre, Peleus and Thetis, Irida Falls to Morpheus' Pits, Crying Prozerpine (blue mix), Pegasus, In the Garden of the Hesperides (Golden Apples mix), Seven Mirrors of Atlas and Ladon (Serpent mix). The title of the tracks, as well as the mood in every song, displays a mythology-inspired work, a little more serene, soft and balanced than The Way of One. Argonautica gets better and better as reaches the end.  

Ariadne's Thread is a thirty-eight minutes EP, that has a deep, vastly dimensional, linear and imponderable musical diagram. Although this work follows in a general basis the creative standards of Koan, here it is possible to notice the duo following a more reflexive, philosophic and soft harmonious theorem. With four songs – Astraea, Alpheus & Arethusa, Hyades and Galatea –, the first one is definitely my favorite, although this EP is majestic from the beginning until the end. 

Diving deeply into an infinite ocean of sensitive splendor, colorful sentimentalities, abysmal nights of incurable tenacious placidity, being completely embraced by the gracious waves of its melodious charismatic fortunes, on Ariadne’s Thread, restless universes collide over multiple horizons of impatient indulgence, pretending to be lost in a stream of diligent sonorous flavors. Deliberately, a precise and salutary consistence rearranges the dynamic patterns of its anatomy, in a convergent alliance of splendor that easily understands the logic behind its own impulse. The introductory enchantment prevails over the benevolent compulsory rapture of its unlimited sonorous configuration. All the way through – expanding in the vicinities of its latent infinity –, a regressive set of harmonies rapidly overflows under the skin of its convergent sonorous projection, intelligently tracing and defining the impalpable frontier of its mordacious, but lucid musical gravity.    

The eleven minutes song Underwater Moonlight is a marvelous exemplar of a beautiful, expressively soft Koan song, that definitely has an intelligent melody, despite its extravagant and graceful simplicity.

Rainfall is a very simple and basic Koan song, although it is also very beautiful. The placidity of its texture, and the calm intensity of its main harmonious line gives to its sonorous configuration a deeply gracious vivacity, whose arrangement intertwines on the space between the notes the consecration of a vast continuous melody, whose main surface is a lot more fragmented, though the affinity of its own discreet sonorous subtleties perpetuates the dense virtuosity of its major notes.     

The discography of Koan has a lot of options and versatility. Literally, this is a musical act that has everything to please all the ardent enthusiasts of electronic music. Here – aside from emphasizing which one is my favorite, The Way of One, a masterpiece, in my opinion – I want to invite you to explore them by your own account, giving here only some suggestions to provoke your curiosity, but giving you the liberty to explore the works of this fantastic electronic music duo at your own expense. Be free to do it. I’m sure you’re going to deeply enjoy this fabulous journey.  



​Wagner

At this very moment, large parts of the world are in crisis. Forest fires, hurricanes, disease spreading mosquitoes, water shortage, food shortage,... We're in deep shit, which is ironic because according to some people; most of these disasters are caused by gay sex. Yes, sodomy is the number one cause of the problems we're in. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people die each day because some men can't keep their penises out of other men's buttholes. 

Shame, isn't it? All those thousands of years of scientific research, all useless now. I mean, if all those scientists, all those people who have worked their entire lives to solve man's problems, had just tried to find a way to stop gay men for fondling each other, we would still be in the happy ages. We would all still die of the plague and other diseases and we would have no idea whatsoever why the sun disappears at night, but we'd be free from natural disasters, right?

I have never trusted opinionists and I don't think I'll ever will. That's probably why I avoid marketing people, priests, journalists, managers and - most importantly - politicians. Who I trust? Scientists, people like Neil deGrasse Tyson, Dick Swaab and Richard Dawkins. People that prove things, people that build our future based on knowledge which in itself is based on repeatable experiments with repeatable results. People who have discovered cures for polio, people who invented solar panels, people who put Kepler into outer space.

That is also why I never ever have someone's opinion about music influence mine. If you tell me that Pink Floyd sucks and someone else tells me that Pink Floyd is the greatest band in the world and both opinions would influence mine, I'd go crazy. Therefore, obviously, I'll make up my own mind. I base my opinion on Pink Floyd, and all other bands, on a few observations. 

1. Does it annoy me?
A lot of songs annoy me (a lot of people too but let's not go there for now). That's the first criterium. It's also repeatable. If you play 'Paradise By The Dashboard Light', I will be as annoyed as every single time I hear that tune. (On a side note, I don't hate Meatloaf. I don't disrespect him for making music I don't like. That would be childish.)

2. Does it have something extra?
A well written song always has something more than others. Taake's 'Myr' is their only song I know the name of, just because of the banjo solo. It's unexpected and well executed. Gorki was awesome because of the Dutch lyrics. Many others of my favorite bands are innovators and pioneers, doing something different.

There are other criteria too but I'm not going to turn this article into a science essay about music appreciation. The point is, the way you appreciate music is completely and utterly based on how your brain works. Your brain filters whatever it needs from both your DNA and your environment to make you like or dislike a song. Think about that for a second while you listen to this Taake song. The banjo solo appears in the second half, but also listen to the drums.

So, by now you might be wondering what the point of this whole article is. Well, I'm a science fan as much as I'm a music fan and quite frankly, I see both  trapped in a whirlpool of dumbing down. Hurricanes are claimed to be caused by gay sex and songs with lyrics like 'You a stupid hoe / You a / You a stupid hoe' become massive hits. So perhaps this article is an effort to save both from being obliterated. I'm a music journalist (one of the few I trust - sometimes) and I see links between the two. Science and music fit perfectly well together. So let's put a bit of science into the music we listen to. It's going to be fun, I promise you.

In recent weeks I have been reading a book by Dutch neuroscientist Dick Swaab. In 'Our Creative Brain', Swaab explains how art and the brain impact each other. It's tremendously interesting literature which I can recommend to anyone. One passage reminded me of drummers and their use of blast beats. Swaab never really talks about black metal, or any alternative music for that matter, so I'll do that.

Have you ever noticed that - unless professionally mastered - blast beats never sound as loud as other times the stick hits the snare? It might seem logical to you but let's go over the entire process. To drum and keep a steady rhythm, a drummer needs to lift his arm and lower it again many times, each time with the exact same amount of time in between. The upward movement, the one you don't hear, is just as important as the hit, if not more. It's in that movement that the precise moment of the hit is being decided. To be able to do that, our brain has to react and decide in nanoseconds and it does too. According to Swaab, our brain thrives on these tempos. Our sense of rhythm is quite unique in the animal kingdom. It requires ultimate precision, thus nanoseconds. To be able to create blast beats, your arm, controlled by the brain, has to hit faster which works best by not lifting the arm up so high. That's where physics come in. Lower distance is less loud. It's simple but it needs a lot of brain effort to do it properly. That is also why musicians practice.

Categorizing music is something for music journalists. They came up with most of the names, like "grunge", "metal", "progressive". However, for genres to exist, you need science. 

Once upon a time a caveman was experimenting with the sound of a tubular piece of wood. When he blew through it, it made a whistling sound. He punched some holes in it and noticed that it sounded different when he covered or uncovered some of the holes. That moment might have well sparked ages of folk music. 

In 1897, Thaddeus Cahill invented the Telharmonium which eventually led to to synthesizers ànd their early adopters. Kraftwerk were hooked on electronic instrumentation from the very beginning. While the technical possibilities expanded, so did the sound and so did Kraftwerk's influence on the world of music. 

While electronics became a household thing, science kept having its influence on music. Around the time America landed on the moon, space rock came into existence, inspired not only by all kinds of psychedelic drugs but also about the popularity of NASA and their missions. 

At one point in their lives, these young metalheads had a future occupation to choose, a study to decide on. Guess what, a lot of them went into archeology and Scandinavian history. In the past ten to fifteen years, we have discovered so much more of the vikings, of ancient Europe as a whole. Those metalheads inspired a whole generation to go literally dig for their roots, before it all disappears under a massive slab of concrete. 

If you look at today's hip hop and rap scene, you will indeed encounter shiploads of cringeworthy lyrics, mostly about genitals. Apparently, today it's incredibly creative to talk about your private parts. Any knowledge about anatomy, physics or how what metal detectors actually do seems obsolete. Did Sheldon Cooper ever do a rant on hip hop lyrics? If not, he should do that. Or Neil deGrasse Tyson. He should make a comedy show about that. 

Right, rap is dumb. But wait, what about Eminem? 

"Rap God" contains 1,560 words, which gets Eminem a spot in the Guinness Book Of Records. The song was eventually replaced by MC Harry Shotta's song "Animal" (which includes 1771 words). I had a solid listen to both songs. Personally, I favor "Rap God". It's simply more creative. While "Animal" feels like an effort to outdo Eminem, "Rap God" is a massive story, something Marshall Matters can do like nobody else. "Stan" is another epic example. It even got the rapper into the official English vocabulary. A stan is an obnoxious fan. Eminem's IQ is estimated to be around 140, not bad.

You'd think that he is an exception but we found another rapper who goes very creative. Baba Brinkman raps about...science. Driven on hip beats, he introduces the listener to religion, rationalism, medicine, biology and evolution. It's fun to listen to and you can learn a thing or two. So we end this article with a few raps. It has become a strange article and I have a strong feeling that there will be more about the correlation between science and music in the near future.