30 Years Ago: BURZUM release Aske

Daily Noise - / 2023

30 Years Ago: BURZUM release Aske

I am satisfied [with Aske] yeah, but it was the second full length album that supposed to be out by now, I guess D.S.P. did not understand that in time. The second LP is recorded in April 1992 and it's getting rather old, it'll be out in September 1993 which is rather late.

On all albums I have done all the instruments myself (except bass on "Aske")... I think it is to late to start to use session musicians now because they will have another style of playing drums, guitars, and so on... it would be totally different band so I drop it. Besides I know how to do it myself. Construction of my ego.

Varg Vikernes / Burzum interview, Niflheim, 1993

BURZUM released the mini album Aske on this day in 1993 through Deathlike Silence.

When I recorded the other albums I was usually alone with the sound technician. However, Samoth (Thomas Haugen, in Emperor) was present when I recorded two of the tracks in the "Aske" mini-LP and parts of HLTO. He played the bass on two of the "Aske" tracks, and was present when I recorded the drums on both "Aske" and HLTO. He played the bass on "Aske" because I for a short period in 1992 flirted with the idea of playing live, and therefore rehearsed one or two times as a band (a guy named Erik Lancelot, from outside Oslo, was supposed to play the drums). I quickly woke up from the "playing-live-psychosis" and luckily changed my mind, so I continued like before, as a one-man-band with no need for even session musicians.

A Burzum Story: Part VI - The Music

Samoth (EMPEROR, ZYKLON) joined as bassist on "Stemmen fra tårnet" and "A Lost Forgotten Sad Spirit":

At that point we had no drummer with Emperor and everything went really slow. So I just had to play something and I joined Satyricon and I played with Gorgoroth and stuff like that. It was just because things was going really slow with my main band. I've never left Emperor. All I did with Burzum was being in the studio for a few hours to do the bass and do drums.

...I respected Burzum and I saw this like an honour to join something I respected, but it was not: Wow, I'm playing with Varg Vikernes or something.

Samoth interview, 1999