Beyond the Tangerine Trees is a celebration of mid to low quality audience recordings, illegally circulated artist’s demos, and other bootlegs. Each episode will be a deep dive into an artist or specific body of work highlighting the unknown incidentals and nuances that only true believers concern themselves with.

The first episode focuses on the legendary Swedish metal vocalist Per Yngve Ohlin, known to friends as Pelle and fans as Dead. Though he never recorded and released any albums during his life, the vocal style he cultivated, first in Morbid and later with the Norwegian band Mayhem, would see him canonized as the patron saint of black metal. While Morbid’s album December Moon was ‘officially’ released on LP in 1994, almost three years after his death, the demos recorded on the 5th and 6th of December, 1987 at Thunderload Studio in Stockholm had already been widely circulating among fans.

Starting with the cassette demo of December Moon the program will culminate with the 1995 Mayhem bootleg The Dawn Of The Black Hearts, a live recording from the 28th of February 1990 in Sarpsborg, Norway featuring Dead on vocals two months before his suicide.The Dawn Of The Black Hearts is perhaps one of the most iconic black metal albums, albeit an unofficial release, which famously features photographs of Dead’s corpse on the cover taken by Euronymous following his suicide. Before that we’ll hear extensive cassette bootlegs of both Morbid rehearsals, Morbid and Mayhem demos featuring Dead, and a number of bootleg studio sessions. In the words of Melek Taus: "Remember you assholes: Dead will survive in the minds of the people who knew him in any way shape or form. He will be revengeanced."

Lawrence Kumpf is a writer and curator based in Brooklyn. He is the founder and artistic director of Blank Forms.

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