Benjamins Europe

The dream that cast its spell, between the First World War and fascism, over the dreamiest parts of Europe - the Germany of Walter Benjamin, and the France of the surrealists - has returned, and is going to set fire to reality itself.

Benjamins Europe is a digital temple, blog, and zine focused (but not set) on a invisible, disjointed, and haunted European art movement that exists between the poles of folk, schizophrenia, romanticism, acid, nostalgia, desire, and morbidity. For now, only a few short recommendations are available - but we hope to extend this soon with more outfletched reviews and interviews.

Click on the little arrows on the left to expand the articles.

Input to BenjaminsEurope[ReplaceMeWithAnAtSign]mailo.com

A song of accusal against a mountain that is rich of gold, but cruel against those who seek it - a translation of the lyrics is available on Youtube. The band, Bakalina Velika has ties to Širom, a experimental folk band that uses traditional, self-made, and improvised instruments.

Maelifell is a project seemingly active for over twenty years. Starting with a sound that would now be considered as core dungeon synth, with clear musical references to medieval music and a deep, dusty sound. The project took a sharp turn, escaped the dungeon, and created music that - at least sometimes - captured the sunshine in sunlight groves. Their Album released in 2000, Rois d'Ici​-​Bas incorporates both dungeon synth and neofolk elements - a thing still rather uncommon up today. Other releases remained more true to their earlier style. The band returned in 2017 with an album that combines former ideas with field recordings, with a most unique result. "Im Kreis der Birken" seems to be a continuiation of this idea - a otherworldy, cautious piece of music.

So is a noise project that uses sounds captured in their hometown to construct surreal stories and tapestries of sound. Re-released with the permission of the creator by BenjaminsEurope.

Paavoharju was, acording to my information, a band consisting of radical christians living in abandoned buildings. Their, and their connected projects, music (and especially music videos) feature a romanticism for the bleak, for the downfall; a love letter to entropy and emptiness. After being inactive for roughly an decade, the band released some more music in 2022/23, but disbanded again afterwards.
Brannten Schnüre is a german band that combines psychotic poems with acid-infused music; the aesthetic is inspired by an overcome, dusty past; infantility and children songs; nightmares and fever dreams. A whole archive of strange videos for the band and their side projects is available at Youtube
conscious dying · Rudolf Eb.er - HEXENMILCH Excerpts 1
 Rudolf Eber is labeling his works as psycho-active acoustic sessions. Often working together with other artists, he creates works in a dadaist/surreal tradition. Not easy to find, but worth to check out.

I first encountered the Kitchen Cynics, a pseudonym of Alan Davidson, when they covered "Star Dancer" on a collaboration of Tom Rapp interpretations, (containing also the first published work of Marissa Nadler). On the whole disk, it might be the only rendition that I'd prefer over the original.
When playing their own songs, The Kitchen Cynics have a wide ouvre, ranging from rather classical folk pieces to downright experimental stuff - with an overall high quality to it.