English musician
Ian Read is an English neofolk and traditional folk musician, and occultist active within chaos magic and Germanic mysticism circles.
Read was a member of Sol Invictus, and founded Fire + Ice in 1991.
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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 band followed up by releasing a split 7-inch 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 (or galdr) of the Rune poem. Read presently holds the position of Drighten in the Rune Gild and co-published the periodical "Rûna", which ceased after 24 issues.
Read became the leader of the English branch of the Illuminates of Thanateros (IOT), 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:
With Death In June.
He participated to Death in June's album "Brown Book" and the tracks have appeared in subsequent Death In June's releases as well:
References.
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