ABSTRACT
Yggdrasil is the cosmic ash tree, it is Odin’s steed and gallows from whence the runes were delivered to the world it is the tree of life, a complexity of meanings enlarged and enriched by the music of this CD. Flyer for the concert of Freya Aswynn and 6 Comm, London, September 19, 2009. https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780203078921/a76efb1f-e5fa-479c-881e-7bfa1d7a1b09/content/fig11_1_B.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> These are the beginnings of the liner notes to Patrick Leagas and Freya Aswynn's album The Fruits of Yggdrasil, which was released by the Hau Ruck label (an Austrian label run by Albin Julius of the group Der Blutharsch). The pair represent interests within a musical milieu that can be loosely called postindustrial and which also is linked to the sister genres neofolk and martial industrial, which have roots in London's punk, post-punk, and industrial music scenes of the late 1970s and early 1980s. This is a milieu that is littered with reference material through lyrics, symbolism and aesthetics to fascism, conservative revolutionary movements, mystical fascism, paganism and particularly the native Northern European religious traditions and mythology of Odinism and Asatru (Gardell 2003; McNallen 2004; Ellis Davidson 1990). The quote is typically specific about the myth of Yggdrasil 1 to which it refers but unspecific about the ‘complexity of meanings’ inferred by the reference (more on this point later).
