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Kaspar Reik – Complete Discography (1925–1937)

Strictly speaking the musical career of Kaspar Reik began already in his adolescent years in the Helbrück Highlands. Even back then he was known to his fellow villagers of Branwald as "der Liederknabe" (the song-boy). By thirteen, he had mastered the region's archaic hymns and could recite long-form harvest epics by memory. During his teen years he developed a student-mentor relationship with a wandering lay brother who taught him rudimentary lute technique, which Kaspar adapted into a distinctive, rhythmic picking style that would later become his hallmark.

Reik's proper experiments with music, that brought to existence the neofolk genre, began in 1924 after he joined the artistic group Galerie für Verlorene Stimmen (Gallery of Lost Voices), a collective of post-war creatives exploring art as ritual and remembrance, based in the community of Neu-Elsen. There he experimented with different instruments, musical influences and rather importantly with different recording techniques. This led to many interesting collaborations and to the recording of his groundbreaking works.

This period of "professional musicianship" span from 1924 to 1937. During this time he recorded 6 official albums. After his death, his comrades published a compilation of his early works. Thus Reik's official discography counts 7 albums. Bellow is a list of Kaspar Reik's official albums

Kaspar Reik – Complete Discography (1925–1937)

1. The Hollow Anthem (1926)

Medium: Wax-cylinder / Later reissued on lacquer disc

Description: Stark and minimalist. Acoustic guitar, spoken-word laments, field recordings of wind and distant artillery. Considered the foundational neofolk album.

Notable Track: “Cindersong”

2. The Rootless Psalms (1940, posthumous compilation of 1925–26 recordings)

Medium: Hand-bound folio with printed lyrics + phonograph record

Description: Fragmentary poems and song sketches written during Reik’s wanderings. Lo-fi recordings capture ambient environments—church bells, riverbanks, hollowed towns.

Notable Track: “Three Runes in Dust”

3. Ash and Mantle (1928–31, live ritual collection)

Medium: Limited vinyl pressing (originally distributed privately)

Description: Recorded in bombed-out abbeys and catacombs. Includes audience chanting, bone zither, rune drumming, and spoken ritualistic invocations.

Notable Track: “Ritual of the Thrice-Wounded”

4. Iron Bell Dreaming (1929)

Medium: Magnetic wire reel (experimental format)

Description: A sonic meditation on sleep, memory, and loss. Uses metallic resonators, looped breathing, and processed church bells. Surreal, dreamlike.

Notable Track: “Helbrück Sleeps Under Iron”

5. Stone Psalter (1931)

Medium: Dual-record folio with illustrated rune pages

Description: Reik’s attempt to reconstruct pre-imperial hymns through a neofolk lens. Features choral drones, ancient scales, and field chants.

Notable Track: “The Song Beneath the Hill”

6. Thorn Crown Archive (1934)

Medium: Shellac double LP

Description: His most structured album—cryptic lyrics over martial guitar rhythms. Themes of exile, rebirth, and shattered banners. Dedicated to the “Unknown Choir.”

Notable Track: “Banner of the Forgotten Eye”

7. Litany for the Cratered World (1937)

Medium: Vinyl box set + illustrated liturgy booklet

Description: A 73-minute requiem of Reik’s final compositions. Vocal laments, ambient drones, and battlefield soundscapes. Considered his magnum opus.

Notable Track: “Where No Ears Remain”

[fatherofneofolk-kr]

The most famous portrait of Kaspar Reik, painted by Alexander Krötke. Commissioned by Reik as a gift for Adrian Moltke in 1932. The original still hangs in A. M.'s tavern The Boar in Harburg

[fatherofneofolk-kr]

Kaspar Reik - once a shepherd and folk singer. Later on a soldier, MIA and miraculous survivor. Veteran of a great war, known as The Continental Fracture (1910-1917). Vagrant on the fields and woodlands of post-war Europe - not a continent but a patchwork of ruined cities, martial law enclaves, and cultural voids. Bard of the Unknown choir - those innocent and scarred souls left to inhabit and build anew their homelands.

Between 1925 and 1937 Reik develops the genre of neofolk music - genre blending traditional folk, soldier’s marches, mysticism, and trauma—a musical eulogy to a culture lost in the war.

His concerts attract veterans, wanderers, cultists, and romantics. He becomes an icon of the “Veil Generation,” men who speak in allegory and wear masks of grief.

Through his label Ash Rune Recordings he propagates this new genre, helping countless younger and older artists to express themselves and to make their intimate dark art known throughout the continent.

After 1935 Kaspar increasingly withdraws from public view, rumored to be composing a final oratorio in a remote monastery-turned-studio.

His last known work, "Litany for the Cratered World" (1937) is a 73-minute composition accompanied by a booklet of woodcut prints and war diaries.

After its release, he vanishes. Some say he died. Others claim he crossed into the Wastes to “sing to the sleeping dead.”

Kaspar Reik becomes a mythic figure - part soldier, bard, and shaman. His blend of personal grief, spiritual symbolism, and martial aesthetics defines Neofolk in this world: a genre built not on nostalgia, but on mourning and the reconstruction of meaning in a broken world.

His signature rune-embroidered military tunic becomes a visual shorthand for the genre - an ambiguous uniform neither praising nor condemning the past.

Critics argue endlessly over his politics, theology, and intentions. But none deny that in a continent of ruin, Reik gave voice to the silence - and taught the wounded how to sing again.

This blog will be dedicated to the exploration of the life and work of this enigmatic artist.

It will contain biographical posts, mainly taken from Marta E. Anwald's seminal work Kaspar Reik: A Life Between Silence and Ashes. From Soldier to Father of Neofolk (1979).

It will also feature information on Reik's discography, lyrics, analysis of his albums and songs and of key concepts found throughout his work, thus revealing his ambiguous and cryptic philosophy and theology.

Since the entire discography of Reik, as well as all the bibliography needed for the purposes of this blog, are available only in a neighboring parallel reality, the latest developments in AI technology have been used to access them.

The blog is curated by

A. Corvus, PhD