Being a record of the ruminations, ramblings and obsessions of a Hound of the noblest breed (or so His Lordship claims, anyway). The focus being on dark music and culture, style, spirituality and - naturally – Basset Hounds.
Welcome to the chronicles of Lord Bassington-Bassington, coming to you from Little Storping in the Swuff – a quaint place located somewhere between England’s Lake District and the outskirts of the Norwegian capital.
This is intended as a log of His explorations of music, books, films and so on. I, your humble chronicler, is merely His Lordship’s secretary.
For more information on Lord Bassington-Bassington, please confer this blog’s opening post. Contacts can be directed to neofolk@zog.no.
It's hard to furnish a mansion in a manner that is properly lordly on a pauper's salary. Still, Lord Bassington-Bassington does the best he can in the currently ongoing project of overhauling Bassington Manor. And now that the Manor has finally got a cuckoo clock, His Lordship decided that this touch of neofolk might as well be carried on to other parts of the house. Two small examples are shown below.
These runic designs were created years ago by Don Bota and have finally found a place on a wall.
And naturally, Lord Bassington-Bassington feels that an absinthe bar is an indispensable part of any non-modern household.
To say that Norwegian neofolk is rare is a bit of an understatement. There's a healthy freak-folk scene (not to be confused with health freaks, who are much less interesting to listen to). On this front, Phaedra’s debut album is a recent shining example.
But something that can be classed as neofolk? Very little.
One exception, of course, is Gyron V, from whom we're still waiting for a debut on Sweden's legendary Cold Meat Industry label (Gyron V's Traditionalist EP is so limited that it's probably useless to hunt for it).
But then there's the slightly enigmatic Weh. We here at the Chronicles have no clue about this project or the gentleman behind it, though we vaguely remember trying to contact him a number of years ago. In the meantime, a double compact disc has been released, but Weh remains as mysterious as ever.
Weh frontman Erik Evju does not play concerts or release many records, but both from the music and the company Mr. Evju keeps (Weh participated on a tribute album in honour of the departed frontman of metal band Windir) we would guess that, like many of the newer neofolk musicians, he has a background in metal music. But as Lord Bassington-Bassington himself occasionally enjoys shaking his head so that his ears flap against his nose, would be the last to hold a bit of headbanging against someone.
Weh's double compact disc, entitled Origins, contains a number of small gems. Lord Bassington-Bassington particularily likes the wonderfully (national) romantic “Heathen Ground.”
But then, tunes about runes tend to get His Lordship interested. And the wonderfully gloomy "The Bells are Ringing Doom" is also a very well-crafted track.
While hunting for some new winter boots, Lord Bassington-Bassington came across these pictures on a website selling finer footwear, and felt the need to share them with the readers of the Chronicles. Not just because the boots are rather fine, but because the man who wears them might very well be the most stylish person in the world.
While overalls is not a natural first choice of attire for the well-dressed gentleman, Mr. Brown overrules all normal rules of dress. For not only does Mr. Brown sport immaculately polished boots, he flies a Spitfire for a living. A Polish Spitfire.
As the pictures from this news story shows, Mr. Brown even has a taste for stylish neckwear.
Overall it is, it seems, impossible to be more dashing than Mr. Brown. Unless, of course, one is John Steed. Or is equipped with the natural elegance of a Basset hound.
While it's probably unrealistic to try to get a job in the same field as Mr. Brown, these pictures does remind Lord Bassington-Bassington that there are some very nice Spitfire cufflinks on offer. Perhaps it's time to invest in a pair.
...and so has the new year. And we here at Bassington Manor have finally succeeded in luring His Lordship from underneath the blankets where he's been hiding for the last month or so, snarling and snapping at anyone trying to rouse him from his semi-hibernation.
In other words, The Lord Bassington-Bassington Chronicles can commence publication again.
So what better way to greet the new year than with a picture of the finished version of Miss Jeanne Sophie Aas’ stained-glass Cthulhu? Isn’t it absolutely, mind-shatteringly beautiful?
Incidentally, Miss Aas is having her first exhibition this February, details can be found on the event's Facebook page. His Lordship kindly - yet forcefully, like a hungry Basset hound - suggests that you attend.
It will be a busy winter for us here at Bassington Manor. There's Café Grössenwahns to arrange, the first one featuring none other than Mr. Salvatori of Italian supremos Spiritual Front, a new Lovecraftian film festival to be held, not to mention that The Bassington-Bassington Chronicles will hold a small celebration with none other than Mr. B, Gentleman Rhymer making his first live appearance in Norway, and between all this there's full-time jobs to attend to and a collection of weird stories to be written. And there is about a million other projects to be managed.
A belated happy new year to you all, and thank you for your patience.
Of the Wand and the Moon have released two small slabs on vinyl to coincide with the season's festivities. Lord Bassington-Bassington couldn't resist these, of course, and they are somewhere in Europe, in the huge mess the postal system becomes before the holidays.
So what better way to wish the readers of the Chronicles a merry Yule, Christmas (or whatever way your personal path makes you celebrate the season) than to share a song from OFTWATM's "It's Like Dying On Christmas Day" with our readers. We hope to see you in the new year, when His Lordship will hopefully be tempted out of his semi-hibernation underneath several thick blankets, so that this blog can be updated more often.
It arrived this morning; Mr. B Gentleman Rhymer’s new long-playing compact disc I Say! To say that this release has been eagerly awaited by Lord Bassington-Bassington is a bit of an understatement; its arrival is like, well, like Christmas. Which, of course, it is, judging from the calendar.
Sadly, all is not tea and roses in the land of chap-hop. The time of the release of I Say! finds our hero in a precarious situation, as he is embroiled in the first chap-hop ”dissing match”, being challenged by MC Elemental to some sort of spat. Well, we’re sure our mild-mannered hero prefers the sort of spats one wears to protect one’s shoes.
Lord Bassington-Bassington has not yet had the time to get his teeth properly into I Say! yet, but it sounds extremely promising, to say the least. So here, to celebrate the new album, is Mr. B's lament to the problems of getting good help, something Lord Bassington-Bassington knows all about (just look at the sub-standard job His Lordship’s secretary does with this blog).
While there’s a lot of exciting things happening in the world of small press publishing, it’s not an everyday occurence that an exciting publisher sees the light of day in the neighbourhood of Bassington Manor. But this is precisely what has happened with the recent launch of Malört Förlag (Wormwood Publishing), who, according to their own mission statement, are dedicated to "texts about the fantastic, the numinous and the aberrant”. Well, Lord Bassington-Bassington likes weird fiction, and he likes wormwood, so all portents point to Malört Förlag becoming one of His Lordship's favourite publishers.
As Malört publishes books in Swedish, this limits their readership to Scandinavians. However, their first release is a two-CD compilation intended as a companion to their forthcoming translation of The Devil in Love which is originally French, and seems to be available in several other languages as well.
And you need not be a linguist to enjoy the record, which includes contributions from artists ranging from Jarboe and Gavin Friday to Shinjuku Thief and Stone Breath, with a special mention for Rikke Lundgreen, one of Lord Bassington-Bassington's favourites on the contemporary Norwegian art scene.
His Lordship would like to congratulate these illustrious Swedes with their first release, and looks forward to following Malört Förlag in the future.
