The Person behind the Project

[Tyrannus]

This topic is coming up again in a groupchat I'm involved in. I figured I'd put the question out there: does anyone find their opinion of an artist ever IMPROVES by knowing who made it? Thinking about my own experience I find it very rare that I like a project more after getting to know who made it. I think generally my opinion stays the same, or often gets worse for one reason or another. Often I'll just come to like them as people and sort of separate that from how I view their work, largely.

I know we talk a lot about anonymity and mystique, but is it ever charming to see who made the project and see how they are as a person, albeit generally it's just through social media so who can say how legitimate of a snapshot that actually is. I think we've touched on how the heavy social media aspect of the scene can sort of weirdly affect how we perceive artists and their work.

Is it important for you that an artist is a nice person? Is it important that they're a "good" person? If you were a fan of Lamentation and then found out they were also Der Stürmer, would you stop liking Lamentation (I already know that's a "yes" for some people)? I know some of this stuff came up with Varg already for sure.

I may have mentioned this but I find my opinion of an artist to be profoundly impacted by how well I get along with them, and I'm not sure I really like that mindset but I can't escape it. I was reading something interesting the other day and someone was speculating how underground music will just become increasingly fragmented and it'll be an oddity to have not talked to your favorite artist, in stark contrast to music's long history of celebrity culture. In that vision of the future, the artist is affected by the fans and vice versa, on like a personal level. As I read that I thought immediately of Dungeon Synth, and how true that person's statements seemed to be for DS already, to a large extent. For many DS artists the very creative process involves a feedback loop in which their moves are inspired by their fans and peers in often very noticeable and obvious ways. Just some food for thought there.

I'm not sure if we've touched on it yet but this brings us to an interesting idea of the "DS celebrity"...obviously no one is really involved in DS for the fame and glory (though some may argue that Mortiis is returning to DS to capitalize on its recent popularity) but the idea of the reputation is certainly still there, to an extent. Some people seem really fixated on cultivating a particular image, or NOT cultivating a particular image, that it could be thought of as kind of distracting and makes their work seem disingenuous. What is the role of reputation in DS these days? How can anyone expect to have staying power or continued relevance if they're just a "regular person"? Or does that in fact help people remember you in a way? Does the best music get remembered, or is it the best personality? Do record labels matter? Do physical releases matter? Does longevity matter? Does anonymity matter? Should you be nice? Should you be obnoxious? Should you care what people think of you? Is anyone ACTUALLY ambivalent about what people think of them? What will make a release be remembered in a few years time? 10 years? 20 years? How do you stand out? Should you stand out?

Whether you put information out there or deliberately withhold it, you're making a conscious artistic decision that is going to impact how others perceive you, whether any party is willing to admit that or not. And every decision you make is going to play into this perception and, in this internet age, everything will be on record. Even if you go back and delete things you said, people can remember it, and they internalize that. Maybe the less you know about a person the better, because you have fewer reasons to dislike them. Maybe this also gives you fewer reasons to like them. In this day and age it seems to matter a lot to people who they publicly support or side with, which is kind of ludicrous in a way, like how fixated on image can we really be and maintain our energy and integrity? I really think the future of this genre is kind of dependent in so many ways on the future of the community, even though we may like to think of them as separate entities. Where are we heading?

[andrewwerdna]

Good questions. If I am friends with an artist I'll be more likely to listen to and appreciate their work, however I'll be far less likely to publicly discuss it because I know I'm biased in that way. And also if I strongly dislike a person or the ideology behind the music, I'll still usually give it a listen out of morbid curiosity, and I'll be honest with myself about whether I find anything to appreciate in it, for instance I listened to a bit of that MLP album (which was mediocre at best). I think this is a bad impulse that is shared by many people, like staring a train wreck, controversy will generate interest, there's no such thing as bad publicity, etc. But that's terrible because it means more people are likely to give such music a chance, and if it has any merit at all, it will gain more fans than something that is of higher quality but without controversy. Unfortunately I think this is the case with far too much art, and I'm no exception, all the controversy of black metal definitely helped draw me in as a youngster, and you can see this in all sorts of different genres. What would really bother me though is a cynical attempt to exploit controversy just for attention, which I could imagine becoming a real problem in our situation with so many competing voices.

About Lamentation and Burzum, I disagree with the politics of the artists, but the goals of the music are not overtly political so it's not something I necessarily grapple with as I'm listening. For me the distance of time and not hearing from the artists goes a long way. It's harder to appreciate Burzum now because of his youtube stuff. And likewise it's harder to appreciate Mortiis now that he's cashing in (though I still haven't made up my mind whether he's sincere about it). What saves it for me is the amount of time since those works were made, I can convince myself that the artists who made them were fundamentally different people and basically think of them as being dead and gone. But I can't do that with current stuff, because I believe the context of the artist's persona during the time that he made the work does matter for the experience of listening.

I personally believe the best approach for an artist is to keep their mouth shut and leave as much to the imagination as possible. I don't think this is so much about liking or disliking the person behind it necessarily, but when the artist is not open and available it's much easier to appreciate the music in and of itself, and I personally feel more free to publicly discuss it when I know I won't be discussing it directly with the artist. But that said, I obviously enjoy the social community and people involved or else I wouldn't engage with it so much myself.

Sometimes I wish I had used a different name when I joined Facebook and this bulletin board and not mentioned that I was behind the old blog, because I do feel like I've ruined whatever mystique I had cultivated with that by running my mouth so much. On the other hand, being anonymous about projects while still engaging socially with the community seems kind of sneaky and might lead to a general air of distrust, with constant speculation about who might be behind what project if that approach becomes common.

So I guess my question is whether people should have anonymous projects while still engaging socially with the community? Or would it be better to just pick one or the other?

[stormcrow]

I think there are other reasons that affect the DS enviroment. Knowing who is the man behind the project is not so critical, since the community (this forum, for instance), features mostly DS musicians, not fans. I am not in the Facebook DS Group, so I can't tell if it's the same there. Apart from this, I see nothing bad in knowing Sidereal Fortress' birth name or which is his favourite football team, for example.
Instead,inside the DS community I have known some really great guys (not only musically talented), which live thousands of kilometers from my home-town. This is something we all should be proud of.

About right-winged artists: this is an ancient topic, if not an obsolete one. The archaic vision of "extreme right-wing black metaller" belongs to the past, just like the NS political views do, I hope. Many bands and projects have shown that black metal can easily work with other kind of political message (think of Panopticon!) or even with no political message at all. Which is most important is Music. I suggest to split the politican from the musician.

[toodarkpark]

Separating the art from the artist is a struggle that's probably been going on forever, some people can do it and some can't.
Also people draw lines of what's acceptable and what isn't in such a haphazard way too.

[Tyrannus]

Jul 5, 2018 6:35:19 GMT -5 stormcrow said:

I think there are other reasons that affect the DS enviroment. Knowing who is the man behind the project is not so critical, since the community (this forum, for instance), features mostly DS musicians, not fans. I am not in the Facebook DS Group, so I can't tell if it's the same there. Apart from this, I see nothing bad in knowing Sidereal Fortress' birth name or which is his favourite football team, for example.
Instead,inside the DS community I have known some really great guys (not only musically talented), which live thousands of kilometers from my home-town. This is something we all should be proud of.

About right-winged artists: this is an ancient topic, if not an obsolete one. The archaic vision of "extreme right-wing black metaller" belongs to the past, just like the NS political views do, I hope. Many bands and projects have shown that black metal can easily work with other kind of political message (think of Panopticon!) or even with no political message at all. Which is most important is Music. I suggest to split the politican from the musician.

Well no offense but I think this is a bit of an oversimplification of the matter at hand, though alternatively maybe I should be saying kudos and maybe it's just me who's overthinking it.

For one thing, as I touched on earlier, the information about an artist that is withheld is just as critical, often just as deliberate, to your perception of an artist as the information that is provided.  Every artist on this forum puts some degree of "themselves" out there, while withholding other parts of themselves.  Like it or not, this information shapes the image people conjure when they view or listen to the work of that artist.  This gets even more peculiar when you get into facebook where you can see the profile that people use to represent themselves on a daily basis, or "to the rest of the world".  You can see if they have views you agree or don't agree with, whether their sense of humor appeals to you, and generally whether you have things in common with them or not.  Whether or not you realize it, the commonalities and differences that you begin to notice between you and another person shape how you perceive them and their work.  We can pretend it doesn't matter but it's exactly that: pretending.  If you do or don't like how an artist presents themselves as a person, this will on some level impact how you perceive their work.  One can try to deny that this plays a part for them but the more you see of the lives of others, the more you begin to have opinions on them and the more this impacts the way you interface with their art.  Conversely, the less you know about an artist the more that's left up to the imagination, and this too plays a part in how you view them and their work.  

On the topic of politics, I find it funny that you throw around words like "ancient" and "archaic" with negative connotations when we're here posting on a forum dedicated to largely medieval or otherwise atavistic music.  This music is intended to hearken back to some vision of the past, with some exceptions.  It largely references old literature and ancient themes, so I don't understand how one can talk about being obsolete in this kind of context.  I find it peculiar how one could rationalize posturing as some bloodthirsty medieval barbarian or evil vampire and yet act as though the bloodshed in our human history has no relevance or place in the music, especially when this history is utilized in such a largely dramatic, revisionist, or otherwise semi-fictitious capacity.  Furthermore, ideological exclusion and opposition has always seemed to me to be fundamental to black metal (and by default DS) in some way or another.  It is only ever anti-christian, anti-Semitic, anti-nazi, anti-capitalist, anti-communist, anti-happiness, anti-life, anti-poser, anti-people-who-don't-listen-to-black-metal, anti-normie, anti-mom-and-dad, anti-SOMETHING.  There is no black metal which condones some viewpoint without implicitly being opposed to the alternative.  There is no black metal that is so radically inclusive that it is not against something, and even inclusiveness often bears with it the paradoxical disdain for exclusiveness.  This is why it never made sense to me to not listen to some form of music for ideological reasons, especially in black metal, because there is not some objectively "correct" side to stand with.  Politics tend to operate on a plane which is largely separate from morality, even though so many people tend to get confused about this.  So many opponents of NSBM will condone communism instead, as if communist dictators never caused suffering or took lives.  I myself am very politically moderate so personally don't "agree" with much political music at all, but I never took this as a reason not to listen to it or to in some way look down on it.  Even for that black metal which doesn't appear political, it is always in some way ideological, and black metal (or music in general) that purports to have no ideology is functionally declaring itself to have no worth.  What good is music that means nothing?  To sound pretty?  What music is there that doesn't have some ideology anyway?  I cannot name a single artist that doesn't believe in something.  Even attempting to strip your music of ideology is in itself an ideological move.  You cannot escape that. 

In conclusion, music does not exist in some vacuum devoid of meaning.  This isn't to say that all music should be interpreted to reflect the views of the artist, because again, none of us here are medieval warriors or vampires or forest critters.  To me it has always been a greater feat of mental gymnastics to rationalize reasons why not to listen to something versus why to listen to something.  I like music of all sorts and will give it a shot to see whether or not it will resonate with me.  My liking it, as with all people, is in fact only very PARTIALLY related to how it sounds, because there are so many other factors that impact how we interact with art, such as packaging, presentation, and the personality behind it.  Whether anyone here wants to admit it or not, the reason you like what you like is hardly based on some "objective" perception of the music itself, and has very much to do with what a lot of you would probably initially describe as "superficial" factors.  Our upbringing and experiences and worldview as a whole impacts the way art affects us, and an overwhelming litany of other features are critical to what causes art to be meaningful to us or to resonate with us.  Anyone who claims to like music "just for how it sounds" has clearly not spent much time thinking critically about why the music they like means something to them and the music they don't like doesn't mean the same thing to them.  We all have our own implicit biases about the people and ideology that goes into music and art in general, and these shape how we perceive it.  That's why I cannot really wrap my head around the notion that saying the person who makes the music doesn't matter in some way.   

[thekeeper]

There are positives and negatives to communities that are open and more intimate like ours, with equal potential for listening to a project and judging it positively or negatively based on the person that we'll come to know. I don't act on any moral principles when listening to music, so I don't really bar myself from artists based on negative character. If I do like someone, I might be more inclined to listen to their music but I'm fairly honest with people and try not to subconsciously trick myself into liking something for the maintenance of our acquaintanceship/relationship, and I think most of us appreciate honest commentary and constructive criticism especially from those we come to know more closely. I do like anonymity a lot at most levels of communication, but this can be difficult to maintain at times in our community; as people have said, it's like every artist is either in the Facebook group or on here, save for maybe 10 (and a couple of those I'll talk to via email) and I think this is an inevitable feature of DS considering how it was revived and collected as a genre. The size of the community draws the creators closer.

I don't mind it the way the scene is now, but a 'DS celebrity' is a bit silly. I think very few people view themselves as someone super important, but I think this dynamic tends to manifest in places where social interactions are gamified (social media symptom). People in music scenes who attempt to be someone important typically come off as obvious and annoying.

Addressing some of Izaac's questions:

What is the role of reputation in DS these days? How can anyone expect to have staying power or continued relevance if they're just a "regular person"? Or does that in fact help people remember you in a way?

Deliberately crafted music reputations are just marketing devices/ploys, either gaining ego capital or actual monetary capital. I think people maintain relevance by their music or attitude, whatever is more noticeable is what they'll be remembered for, good or bad.

Does the best music get remembered, or is it the best personality?

I think music outlasts the personality. We opt in for knowledge of personality by joining the FB group or this board, reading interviews, etc, and eventually the personality can become a known factor, it just depends on how vocal someone is about announcing who they are.

Do record labels matter? Do physical releases matter? Does longevity matter? Does anonymity matter?

For people who care to give the genre legitimacy, I think the first two create the longevity. It's not necessarily required, but it helps a ton since a lot of music fans value physical formats. Anonymity matters to a small degree for those who want DS to maintain an air of mystery, and this might be true for many other scenes as well.

Should you be nice? Should you be obnoxious? Should you care what people think of you? Is anyone ACTUALLY ambivalent about what people think of them?

I personally prefer nice people. I don't like obnoxious people, but there will always be obnoxious people. If reputation matters to someone or if it's advantageous in any way to maintain a positive image, people will make the appropriate effort to adapt based on their desired image. Someone who's desperate to be liked (or hated) will act desperately and noticeably. I think people can be ambivalent about this whatever extent that still allows their desired comfort level/situation to be maintained. This relates to the social proximity of those who are judging, you'll obviously try less to maintain your image to people socially further away from you. I think you can be much more ambivalent on the internet. In terms of if people should be ambivalent in DS, I think its a balance in order to stay interesting. Ambivalence can innovate music, too many people not caring dissolves cohesion.

What will make a release be remembered in a few years time? 10 years? 20 years? How do you stand out? Should you stand out?

Memorable and unique music stands the test of time. I think people stand out for these two attributes. I don't like shoulds that much, but I think people should make music that they're satisfied with and not worry too much about its reception. Trying too hard results in disjointed ideas or blending in to the point of being soon forgotten.

Jul 4, 2018 13:48:11 GMT -5 andrewwerdna said:

Sometimes I wish I had used a different name when I joined Facebook and this bulletin board and not mentioned that I was behind the old blog, because I do feel like I've ruined whatever mystique I had cultivated with that by running my mouth so much. On the other hand, being anonymous about projects while still engaging socially with the community seems kind of sneaky and might lead to a general air of distrust, with constant speculation about who might be behind what project if that approach becomes common.

So I guess my question is whether people should have anonymous projects while still engaging socially with the community? Or would it be better to just pick one or the other?

I view you the same as when you just had the blog. You gave enough opinions on the blog and even replied to comments so I don't think anything was lost by using your same username on here and on FB.

I don't see any harm in the anonymous project+social individual combo, but it might get hard to maintain your project anonymity without explicitly saying "I don't want to say what my project is", unless you just lie and say you don't have one. It might be hard to promote anything you do unless its under the guise of "hey, I found this project". The anon+soc combo is definitely in the minority in DS. Seems like anonymous projects are eventually 'found out' anyway.

[DieuxDesCimetieres]

Jul 5, 2018 6:35:19 GMT -5 stormcrow said:

The archaic vision of "extreme right-wing black metaller" belongs to the past, just like the NS political views do, I hope.

This is far from the case, at least here. It seems to me that many are actually drawn more to NS/racial ideology than the traditional satanism and devil worship. Heck, in our recent parliament elections, many black metal people actually voted for a creationist christian because she's anti-immigration and quite racist. I think that in the 90's or 00's, even people into NSBM would not have voted for a christian no matter what!

I think part of that has to do with the fact that satanism as a shock thing is kinda passé. It just doesn't shock people anymore to see inverted crosses and pentagrams and goat heads and stuff like that. You have to push the envelope with other means. Two I can think of are NS things and something like ultraperverted sexuality like paedophilia.

But for the whole post not to be on a tangent; I don't know any DS musicians very closely, but in other genres I do know a lot of musicians, and I cannot recall a single case where getting to know a musician would have lessened my respect for the music, even if they didn't turn out to be like I expected them to be based on their music. Well, there's one exception, being legendary Texas jewboy and country singer Kinky Friedman, whose very pro-Trump views turned me off a bit. But I can still enjoy the music of people I do not personally like or necessarily respect a whole lot as persons, as long as they don't cross any critical lines.

We can separate ideology and art (but I also respect the viewpoint of those who choose not to do so!), and I think it is even easier to separate person from art in most cases.

[Tyrannus]

Jul 5, 2018 11:59:36 GMT -5 DieuxDesCimetieres said:

Jul 5, 2018 6:35:19 GMT -5 stormcrow said:

The archaic vision of "extreme right-wing black metaller" belongs to the past, just like the NS political views do, I hope.

This is far from the case, at least here. It seems to me that many are actually drawn more to NS/racial ideology than the traditional satanism and devil worship. Heck, in our recent parliament elections, many black metal people actually voted for a creationist christian because she's anti-immigration and quite racist. I think that in the 90's or 00's, even people into NSBM would not have voted for a christian no matter what!

I think part of that has to do with the fact that satanism as a shock thing is kinda passé. It just doesn't shock people anymore to see inverted crosses and pentagrams and goat heads and stuff like that. You have to push the envelope with other means. Two I can think of are NS things and something like ultraperverted sexuality like paedophilia.

But for the whole post not to be on a tangent; I don't know any DS musicians very closely, but in other genres I do know a lot of musicians, and I cannot recall a single case where getting to know a musician would have lessened my respect for the music, even if they didn't turn out to be like I expected them to be based on their music. Well, there's one exception, being legendary Texas jewboy and country singer Kinky Friedman, whose very pro-Trump views turned me off a bit. But I can still enjoy the music of people I do not personally like or necessarily respect a whole lot as persons, as long as they don't cross any critical lines.

We can separate ideology and art (but I also respect the viewpoint of those who choose not to do so!), and I think it is even easier to separate person from art in most cases.

And I think it's all reminiscent of what andrewwerdna said where it almost seems like controversial themes are being capitalized upon in some cases.  The shocking/edgy market is unfortunately easy to manipulate and use for one's gain, which results in a proliferation of some pretty intense and disturbing stuff in certain scenes.  It seems like it'd be hard for this to become a real trend in DS, thankfully, since DS is largely inoffensive from a sonic standpoint and thus somewhat difficult to pair up with some shocking ideology without potentially coming across as ridiculous.  

[stormcrow]

Of course there are tons of NSBM bands, mostly based in the former Soviet areas, and I can understand why. But it seems to be more a useful "tag" than a real political belief, since -as you can hear/read in some interviews- many of those artists speak more like "anarchist" than like extreme right-wing supporters.
Said this, acts like Burzum or Lamentation have released some really EXCELLENT music in the past, "Hivs Lyset Tar Oss" and "Filosofem" are two extreme metal masterpieces, that's for sure! I obviously can't tell the same about Burzum's propaganda YT channel. Honestly, I can't help smiling as I see that man pushing WWII videos, claiming the truth about who shot first etc....I mean , it's like claiming to know who first was "created": egg or hen. There are tons of contradiction in his videos, as well. But hey, we're not here to make politics. I would never subscribe his channel, but I still enjoy his old music stuff, and I see nothing wrong in this.

What Tyrannus is saying about private infos on DS artists, I guess (let me know if I understood well) is about losing that "aura" of mysticism....I mean, like the old rumors around Mortiis living in a ruined Swedish castle, putting on the "elfic" nose with surgery, and so. Isn't it? I can understand this, since it's part of the "game". BUT: in this forum there are 90% artists sharing facts about songwriting techniques, gear, influences, making split albums together... this is absolutely normal, since we all (yes, Varg too!) use the Internet.

Sorry for my English...I know it could be better

[toodarkpark]

Jul 6, 2018 2:36:59 GMT -5 stormcrow said:

Of course there are tons of NSBM bands, mostly based in the former Soviet areas, and I can understand why. But it seems to be more a useful "tag" than a real political belief, since -as you can hear/read in some interviews- many of those artists speak more like "anarchist" than like extreme right-wing supporters.
Said this, acts like Burzum or Lamentation have released some really EXCELLENT music in the past, "Hivs Lyset Tar Oss" and "Filosofem" are two extreme metal masterpieces, that's for sure! I obviously can't tell the same about Burzum's propaganda YT channel. Honestly, I can't help smiling as I see that man pushing WWII videos, claiming the truth about who shot first etc....I mean , it's like claiming to know who first was "created": egg or hen. There are tons of contradiction in his videos, as well. But hey, we're not here to make politics. I would never subscribe his channel, but I still enjoy his old music stuff, and I see nothing wrong in this.

What Tyrannus is saying about private infos on DS artists, I guess (let me know if I understood well) is about losing that "aura" of mysticism....I mean, like the old rumors around Mortiis living in a ruined Swedish castle, putting on the "elfic" nose with surgery, and so. Isn't it? I can understand this, since it's part of the "game". BUT: in this forum there are 90% artists sharing facts about songwriting techniques, gear, influences, making split albums together... this is absolutely normal, since we all (yes, Varg too!) use the Internet.

Sorry for my English...I know it could be better

Your English is fine for not being your main language, carry on

[kktz]

I come from old hc/punk background, were more on the left but also critical to the socialist Yugoslavia, and at the end, from real life experiences I learned not to trust ANY politics. Be it conservative or liberal, mainstream or far right or far left, or whatever. It's all corrupted as I see it, so you can say that for the most part I don't care when it comes to music and politics. But I can be put off by stupidity on all sides. NS is part of BM, and I can live with that. On the other hand, knowing artist online may change our vision of the art, than again, we all have our own minds and lifes, no one is perfect.

[Niair de Nasqda]

Something I think you have not mentioned (I've read quickly the whole thread):

The more anonymous a project is, the harder it is for the person behind to promote it. Some compensated this in the BM scene by burning churches and/or killing people, but after that, anonymity is lost. What I said implies that given the same level of success, the anonymous project will probably be better in itself, with more quality musically. So when I see mentioned a musical project that is successful and nothing can be known about the person behind, I tend to think that is has to be at least quite good, so I listen to it to see if that's true. And it usually is. The opposite of this is are "pop stars", their music is usually so shitty that thy have a lot of promotion that tends to focus on their personas.
Just to avoid misunderstandings: I know that the quality of the music is something subjective and that for instance I might not like a successful project's music. But at least in a genre like this (unlike in pop music) successful projects tend to have higher possibilities of being something that I (and obviously anyone) can like. That's why I'm using "quality" as a factor.

So I don't like anonymity for the image associated with it (masks, corpse paint or whatever), but mainly for what I said. Image can enhance the atmosphere, of course, but in my view, the anonymity factor plays a very little part in the atmosphere that the image provides. I mean, you can still use masks and not be anonymous, like Mortiis. I am not anonymous, but I like to keep some level of anonymity. Yes, I am in this forum and in the Facebook group, but there I use a picture of myself in which I'm not recognisable, I don't use my real name and have very restrictive privacy settings in Facebook.

Another thing I like about anonymity, that just came to my mind, is that it makes the person behind be perceived as a more static entity. I'm the first one to enjoy change and experimentation in music, but when I see people changing their personality or ideas too quickly (drastically) I think that they might have a weak personality and they might just be following trends, like sheep. And this perception affects to some degree the perception of the music. And yes, those impressions can be wrong as people are actually much more complex than the way they present themselves publicly. But precisely being anonymous prevents many of those misunderstandings.

[wyverngarden]

Idea of the "whole person" is an illusion, a way society tries to impose order. We simply get revealed in different ways, to others and to ourselves, in everything that we do. Friendship is so valuable because we really value the person we become when we are with that other person, and so on. But it's not a subjective thing, we "become" together in the things we enjoy, in the things we build, in the triumphs of battle and the solemnities of defeat. But the fact that something is revealed, also means that other things are concealed. You can't take a picture, in other words, without a frame. Nor can you take a meaningful picture without figure and ground, without the figure in focus and the ground mostly out of focus yet always threatening to break through in its mysterious depths. Anonymity is a concealment that safeguards and protects the way we are as artists. Presumably that way is something to be valued, or we wouldn't spend all of this (mostly thankless) effort on the art.

When there are breaks in anonymity it does color things though. External facts and ideas intrude into the frame and it's impossible to pretend they are not there. The Burzum issue is a particularly sad case. For me what is revealed in the music are the atmospheres of Germanic paganism, a way of revealing that we know precisely through its negative side (as being "that which is not" Christianity -- the idea of tales fixed in written form, rather than continually reshaped in an oral culture to fit the moment was an invention of the Church scribes or their Roman forebears.) But in the music of Burzum these atmospheres are actually posited in ways that (in my view) no other musician has quite been able to achieve, although curiously Bo Hansson's Lord of the Rings album from 1970 comes very close, as does Algarnas Tradgard "Framtiden..." Yet all the other stuff we know about Varg, the church burnings and Nazi associations drags all this stuff through the mud. It's what prevents what he holds so dear from ever emerging as something that could be a real force in the world. Although -- maybe in a perverse way it conceals and protects it, in that it never does emerge, because it would perhaps be transformed in the wrong hands (in the hands of real power).

So, I do try to constantly reframe, which means separate the art from the artist, if too much of the artist's life intrudes into the frame of the art. But this separation is not a frivolous thing. One can't take the separation as "given". It takes tremendous and continuing effort on the part of each individual to perform the separation, effort that takes on the character of a perpetual exorcism, a work of continuing magic to be sure.

[Magus]

Dec 31, 2017 14:30:46 GMT -5 stormcrow said:

Dec 31, 2017 12:46:44 GMT -5 Magus said:

Hi all, i'm Gianluca (Magus), the founder of Sagenhaft, i have seen that many people appreciate my demotapes and that the name Sagenhaft is well known in the context of the Dungeon Synth and I am very pleased about it!i wanna thank all of you, if you have any questions about Sagenhaft feel free to contact me, thanks again! 

hello!!! nice to see a compatriot here!   where are you from? I'm typing from Florence. 

Hi there! i was born in Napoli, but i live near the independent republic of San marino!

[Magus]

Dec 31, 2017 14:30:46 GMT -5 stormcrow said:

Dec 31, 2017 12:46:44 GMT -5 Magus said:

Hi all, i'm Gianluca (Magus), the founder of Sagenhaft, i have seen that many people appreciate my demotapes and that the name Sagenhaft is well known in the context of the Dungeon Synth and I am very pleased about it!i wanna thank all of you, if you have any questions about Sagenhaft feel free to contact me, thanks again! 

hello!!! nice to see a compatriot here!   where are you from? I'm typing from Florence. 

Hi, i'm from Napoli!