Ian Read (musician)


Ian Read is an English neofolk and traditional folk musician, and occultist active within chaos magic and Germanic mysticism circles.

Early life

Read left school at 16, and at the age of 17, he became an adherent of Germanic neopaganism and began studying Germanic paganism.

Music career

In 1987, Read joined Tony Wakeford's Sol Invictus along with Karl Blake. Read recorded three albums and an EP with Sol Invictus before leaving to form the band Fire + Ice in 1991.
Ian Read founded an all traditional folk band named Figg's Academy that played a couple of gigs, notably in 2008 at the Wave-Gotik-Treffen in Leipzig.

Fire + Ice

Read founded Fire + Ice in 1991 after several years as a member of Sol Invictus. According to their sole website, "The heartlessness of the modern commercial consumer society ruins the lives of many. FIRE + ICE takes the purity and philosophy of early music and melds it into a message redolent with powerful seeds of honour, truth, loyalty and the bond of true friendship."
His work as Fire + Ice have had a large amount of influence on neofolk music.
The band played Wave-Gotik-Treffen in Leipzig in 1999 with a lineup that included Ysanne Spevack and Julia Kent. The festival also featured performances by Rose McDowall, Lydia Lunch, HIM and Diamanda Galas among more celebrated goth subculture glitterati.
The band followed up by releasing a split 7" single with the neofolk song The Unquiet Grave recorded in London in 2000, featuring vocals and viola by Ysanne Spevack as a duet with Ian Read. It was released in Germany by Tesco Distribution on blue vinyl with a letterpress foil gatefold cover.

Other pursuits

In 1996, Read was named as a Rune-Master within the Rune-Gild. His master work was the Fire + Ice album Rûna that included a self-written and sung galdor of the Rune poem. Read presently holds the position of Drighten in the Rune Gild and co-publishes the periodical Rûna.
Read became the leader of the English branch of the Illuminates of Thanateros, in the early 1990s after founder Peter Carroll stepped down as leading Magus. Read is currently the editor of the IOT's Chaos International.

Discography

With Current 93

He participated to the sessions of Current 93's album Swastikas For Noddy, therefore he appears on this album and some subsequent albums containing remixes of this material:
He participated to Death in June's album Brown Book and the tracks have appeared in subsequent Death In June's releases as well:

Albums

EPs

Videos