dark folk

1. Ghosts of Progress is a dark-folk band from Santa Cruz fronted by Roland Sonneville, and included a rolling membership which included members of Travel by Train, 300 Pounds, Wooly Mar, Inventing Edward, and Amanda West. They have released 2 full length records (“the Letters of Lost Hope” and “The Extinction”) as well as a split record with Portland’s Cuspidor. They have put out records on Burning Daisies Records and Biphasic Records. They currently release music with Lafargue Records.

Amen Dunes, the solo project of Damon McMahon, began with recordings made in the fall of 2006 in upstate New York. Those tapes were initially put on the shelf as personal recordings he never intended for release, and the following summer, McMahon moved to China and all but stopped making music. He would live in Beijing for the next few years, writing and recording only occasionally. With the release of DIA on Locust Music in 2009, however, he decided to move back to the States and form a band around Amen Dunes.

Angel Olsen hails from sunny, gorgeous, post-industrial St. Louis, Missouri. Beginning her performing career at age 16 in coffee shops, she now hones her craft in Chicago, Illinois, with recent tours to both seaboards and upcoming collaborations with members of the national indie music scene. Her intimate songwriting is coupled with a strong, ethereal tone and hypnotic rhythm acoustic guitar, borrowing from influences as varied as Skeeter Davis and homespun Americana to Spanish guitar and the French New-Wave chanteuse Francoise Hardy.

Read more about Angel Olsen on Last.fm.

Freya Aswynn the pen name of Elizabeth Hooijschuur (born in November 1949, Zaandam) is a Dutch musician, painter, astrologist and author for Llewellyn Worldwide. A self-proclaimed "Norse Occultist", Aswynn has written books focusing on aspects of Norse paganism combined with historically unrelated subjects such as Kabbalah and Thelema.
Aswynn has worked on several musical projects over the years, most notably the vocals for Current 93. She has appeared on the albums Swastikas for Noddy, Crooked Crosses for the Nodding God, Looney Runes, Sixsixsix Sicksicksick and several others.