The Otherworld with MHLee:
Playlist
from May 14, 2026
The Otherworld explores music that seeks to conjure images of distant lands and fantasy ambiance through dreamy dungeon-synth, acid folk, neo-folk, and more. Featuring work primarily from small projects, it's an ambiance to which you can drift off and imagine yourself in another land.
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May 14, 2026: The Otherworld: Episode 42
| Artist |
Track |
Album |
Year |
Comments |
Images |
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Paladin
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Bones Beneath the Abbey
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A Feast in the Time of Plague
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2025
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Four o' Cups
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Rest for Now (in the Castle Courtyard)
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Demo MMXXVI
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2026
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Sorrows of the Moon
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Vorpal Blades
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Vorpal Blades
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2022
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"He took his vorpal sword in hand, |
longtime the manxsome foe he sought |
So rested he by the Tum-Tum Tree |
And stood awhile in thought. |
...|
One, two! One, two! And through and through |
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! |
He left it dead, and with its head |
He went galumphing back." |
- Lewis Carroll
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Eternal Champion
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Court of the Autarch
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TERMINUS EST
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2019
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Erreth-Akbe
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The Room of Chains
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A Lantern Swathed
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2022
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This album is dedicated to my grandmother Linda, and to Ursula K. Le Guin
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Khüll
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Reconquest of the Kingdom
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Return from Exile
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2021
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Isegrimm
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Die Gefolgschaft
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Der Herr von Verona
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2018
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Nebelung
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Mittwinter
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IN SOLIDARITY: Songs Of Struggle and Liberation
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2020
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We would like to thank A Blaze Ansuz for their collaboration in organizing/promoting this compilation. We would like to thank all of the artists who gave their time and art to this cause, and to all who support what we are doing. We would like to thank all of those brave souls protesting in Louisville, Portland, Kenosha, Seattle, Los Angeles and everywhere else against this wretched police state and those who are putting their bodies on the line to stand for the liberation of all peoples. We thank the predictability and incompetence of DJ LRAD. We thank those who face the very real threat of far-right terrorism.
We thank the street medics for putting in the Great Work to keep folks safe and all those at home who are helping to organize their communities.
We must continue in our struggle for liberation as long as we can, until we live in an equitable society that understands and values human dignity, life and liberty. Until society understands that Black Lives Matter, and that the survival of our planet is not negotiable.
As Durruti once said, "We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth; there is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world here, in our hearts. That world is growing in this minute."
The future is in our hands!
- L/F 161
|
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Thurnin
|
Forsake Us Not
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Menhir
|
2021
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"From Stillness we've grown, In sorrow we thrive,
Our archaic rituals, to keep us alive,
|
The roots and the stones, lead the ancient rites
Exiled we stand , with the thorns on our side
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And aeons we waited, for the stars to align
Another lost vagrant, yet our paths did entwine
|
We mourn not for departure, but find solace in arrival
We vow to keep them safe, for they are our survival,
|
"Come forward then, our blessed child,
and feast your eyes upon these wilds,
There's beauty all across the trees,
but darkness hides amongst these leaves"
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Tranquillity is ours to give, but never in our gaze
Forsake us not, but listen to our esoteric ways.
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Our voice was once as lost as you, and winds sang our decay
The melody soared with the breeze, and took all hope away
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Wistful laments of the damned, have turned the tides before
Our vines will rot, the trees will fall, but to their cause we swore.
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The end was always imminent but never do we fear,
This way of life, is ours to save, these trials of Menhir"
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Blake Hornsby
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An Omnipotent Point of View
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Elemental Essence of a Primal Future
|
2018
|
This album is part of my product for my final capstone for my Sustainable Development degree. This is my first instrumental album and each composition correlates with an environmental poem that I wrote of the same name, which you can access as an e-book on Amazon.
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The album is meant to be listened to in junction with the poetry, whether you read the poems while listening to the composition, read the correlating poem before listening to the composition, or vice versa.
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The music blends blues, Indian, Middle Eastern, Celtic, psychedelic, experimental, and Medieval styles for acoustic guitar.
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The poetry is heavily deep ecologically based and draws on Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Greek, Taoist, Indigenous, Pagan, and other religious/spiritual concepts to allow us to transcend the "man-in-Environment" paradigm. It provides thoughts, ideals, and actions on how we should view our surroundings of nature as an interconnected superorganism where everything should be revered as sacred.
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Greet
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Summers Flame
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Harmonium 2
|
2024
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Shirley Collins
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Crowlink
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Heart's Ease
|
2020
|
On Heart’s Ease, Shirley delivers a record even stronger than Lodestar having completely regained her confidence, and singing so well that you can’t believe she was away for so long. As Shirley put it, “Lodestar wasn’t too bad, was it? But when I listen to it, it does sometimes sound rather tentative. I had to record it at home because I was just too nervous to sing in front of somebody I didn’t know. This time I was far more relaxed – even though I went into a studio.” Recorded at Metway in Brighton, Heart’s Ease is as compelling and original as Shirley’s great albums from the Sixties and Seventies. There are traditional songs, of course, from England and the USA, but there are also more new songs than in the past (four non-traditional tracks) and there’s even a burst of experimentation that hints at possible new directions to come.
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Werna Wolf
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Fumée Noire
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DERNIER REMPART
|
2024
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THE STORY
|
You are the last bastion of a dying civilization. In the distance, the last of rays of the setting sun hit your armor in one last rush, warming your heart right before the ordeal begins. Soon, you’ll have to go through the night in a freezing universe upon which the Usurper tyrannically reigns. Upon realizing he couldn’t take over the King’s throne, that prince decided to plot against the kingdom in the vilest way, lying, scheming and manipulating to reach his goal. Alas, one has to admit the demon, acting underground, seems to have had the best of men, using their weakness to divide them within and without, so that they now walk upside down, aimlessly moving around in a blind desert where mirror-like mirages endlessly pile up and succeed one another. Who would have thought that, one day, the dead would walk the Earth? Disorientated, mistaking wrong for right, South for North and darkness for light, they keep on clumsily walking straight into the abyss, slaves to their worst desires, and already the smell of war attracts the vultures. Your whole world is on the brink of complete chaos. A cycle is coming to an end, painfully giving birth to the next one. All that’s left is hope, the virtuous man’s treasure. Your only refuge is the Temple, on top of the Eternal Mountain, where sits unspoiled, enshrined within the purest crystal, one last ray of sunlight. Secrecy, silence and solitude shall be your allies on this quest. The ascent won’t be easy. Many are called but few are chosen. Stay strong, for the King shall soon be back!
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THE ALBUM
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The tracks on this album were composed on an acoustic guitar over the course of seven years marked by overwhelming events at a personal level. Their elaboration was hard and even harder was their birth. Nevertheless, replacing the synthesizer sounds with my own voice, these are the ones I regularly play to the persons I love the most in this world and whose adventure has barely started. The texts you will find in the lyrics section were partly inspired by some of my dreams, which clearly showed me the path I was to follow. It seems the Way of the Wolf unavoidably leads to the Way of the Lamb. Doesn’t God speak to each and everyone the language they understand? And if you can find in this perfectly imperfect music of mine, which I strove to make both simple and sober, some kind of solace in the dark times we’re currently going through — as well as in the even darker times ahead —, then maybe I haven’t done all this for nothing. Enjoy and God bless you.
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THE ARTWORK
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The drawing on the left is based on an 1895 photograph of Saint Theresa of Lisieux, on which the future saint was imitating her role model, namely Joan of Arc, the patron saint of this wonderful and magnificent country we call France. As for the heart, it comes from a collection of Illustrated poems I published under a different name a few years ago.
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Sanctificetur
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Litanie I: de la gloire
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Sanctificetur
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Remerciements spécial à Castellum Scriptoris et son équipe pour leur retour sur ce premier opus, le Seigneur soit avec vous.
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Deaf Knight
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De tous biens plaine (Hayne van Ghizeghem Cover)
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Medievalist
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2018
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First album of the project, one and a half month after the release of the demo. The methods did not change, and the aim is still to make dungeon synth with early and medieval songs. The artists are specified when they are known, as many songwriters are not known. The songs mainly come from the 13th century.
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Dregahir
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Escape from the White Hand
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Dregahir the Crebain
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2022
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This story tells the adventures of Dregahir, a brave crebain who managed to fly on his own, far from the gloom of Orthanc. Over the valley and through the mountains, our little hero is on his way to a new life, sweet and peaceful, although the shadow of the past is never far away.
This tale depicts the life of all those beings wanting to flee the shadow of tyranny for the light of freedom.
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Lore Master
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Castle Volkihar
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Through Realms Forgotten
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2025
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Lo-Fi Dungeon Synth based around my love for Fantasy novels, DnD, video games, and everything in between. It would be a dream if groups ended up using this music for their sessions or just as atmosphere while reading a fantasy book.
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This album is best enjoyed in a moodily lit room with maybe a crackling fire and the entrancing pitter patter of rain outside - while you're trying to roll a Natural 20.
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LOW REZ
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Iron Choir
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Thrower of Swords
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2025
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Thrower of Swords is the first EP from LOW REZ. A collection of dungeon synth and dark ambient compositions inspired by fantasy worlds, ritual imagery, and strange forgotten doctrines.
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If you enjoyed this, feel free to follow, more releases coming soon ⚔️
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Chapel Tapes
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Sheba's (Slight) Return
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Spirit of Clive: A Tribute To The Music Of Clive Palmer & COB
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2022
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Isolation Jams is proud to present : Spirit Of Clive - A tribute to the music of Clive Palmer & COB
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Clive Palmer is a mystery. He was Incredible, he was Original, but he chose to not be Famous.
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His influence permeates through the British folk revival of the 1960s, the progressive “acid folk” of the 1970s and the experimental free-folk of the 1990s and 00s, yet few people know his name.
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A beatnik rather than a hippy, Clive chose total freedom over a career in the music industry and spent much of his later life quietly painting, building instruments and being free, in Cornwall and later in France.
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His high-profile friends such as Bert Jansch, John Martyn and Billy Connolly often spoke of Clive’s importance and influence, and his experimentation and restless creativity has influenced some of the most interesting musicians of today.
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This tribute album captures the spirit of Clive and highlights his continued and often overlooked influence.
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All money raised from this tribute album is going to the restoration of recently discovered rare recordings of Clive from the 1960s onwards, and to the production of a documentary about Clive Palmer.
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Toadstone
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The Lambton Worm
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Toadstone
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2018
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The Soil Bleeds Black
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The Peasants Revolt
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Medieval
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2016
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