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Release Date: 2020Labels: Styggelse, Malört Förlag
"This is a book soundtrack to Scottish Theosophist and artist John Duncan’s (1866–1945) enigmatic, haunting and exceedingly rare children’s book ”The Woodman and the Elves” (c. 1905), published in a Swedish translation (with the original English text included, and an afterword by David Tibet) as ”Skogvaktaren och vättarna” by bibliophile press Malört Förlag in 2020. Since Malört started out in 2010, a book soundtrack has accompanied each of their books on vinyl or cd, ”Skogvaktaren” being the first cassette release (this time in collaboration with Styggelse Tapes). Among Duncan’s most famous works is the so-called ”Witches’ Well” in Edinburgh, a monument over those executed for witchcraft in olden times, and much of his production reflected his own involvement with various esoteric currents. In ”The Woodman and the Elves”, an old man finds six peculiar eggs in the forest, from which wicked elf children are hatched. The narrative ends with a journey into the nocturnal mysteries of the woods, and leaves the reader with many unanswered questions. The multi-layered story clearly has some esoteric significance related to Duncan’s mystical worldview – exactly what is up to the reader to discern. Duncan famously claimed to hear fairy music while he painted, and the otherworldly music of Kristian Olsson could surely be taken as stemming from a shadowy fairy realm. A veteran of the international industrial scene, since the 1990s Olsson has been creating a huge body of work ranging from the harsh to the atmospheric – often drawing on the sinister folklore of northern Sweden for inspiration. He thus seemed a natural choice for Malört to compose this book soundtrack. "–Per Faxneld, on behalf of Malört Förlag