Folk Songs For An Obscure Race

A compilation of the earliest music made by Grim, aka Jun Konagaya, Folk Songs For An Obscure Race pulls together Grim’s Folk Music LP and his Amaterasu and Message EPs. They were released between 1985 and 1987, after Konagaya’s industrial duo White Hospital dissolved; they pick up on some of that group’s interests, but push things further, Konagaya’s songs equal parts martial chant and synth-splatter blow-out. Sometimes the material sits close to classic S.P.K. and other industrial forebears, but as the title suggests, there’s something oddly folksy about Grim’s music too, a deep, devotional melancholy at its heart.