Alex Kurtagić

Alex Kurtagić (born 1970) is a British artist, cultural commentator, satirist, musician, novelist, and publisher. He is the founder of Supernal Music and various publishing houses. For a time, he was a far-right speaker and writer,[1] although he's since drawn a line under political extremism.[2] His writing has dealt with topics relating to culture, society, politics, music,[3][4] and community relations in the contemporary West. He is known as a proponent of elitism[5] and as a critic of conservatism.[6]

Alex Kurtagić
Born1970 (age 49–50)
CitizenshipUK
Occupationauthor, editor, publisher, artist, musician
Known forAlbum cover illustration
Supernal Music (record label)
Mister (novel)
Websitealexkurtagic.info

Life

Kurtagić was born in 1970. Due to his parents' jobs he spent part of his youth in South America.[7] In 1995, he founded the project Benighted Leams, which has since released four albums.[8] In 1996 he founded Supernal Music.[9][10]

During the mid-to-late 1990s, he became known for his album cover illustrations. His artwork appeared on albums by black metal artists, such as Dimmu Borgir, Deinonychus, among others. His cover of Dimmu Borgir's Stormblåst is featured in the book Heavy Metal Thunder: Album Covers that Rocked the World.[11]

Writer

Kurtagić's dystopian novel, Mister, was published in 2009. For the next few years, Kurtagić was active as a social, cultural, and political commentator. In 2011 a collection of articles and essays was published in book form by Unitall Verlag in German translation, with the title Ja, Afrika muss zur Hölle gehen.

A second collection, also in German, was published by Antaios in 2013 as Warum Konservative immer verlieren.[12][13]

More recently, a book collecting his artwork was published, containing also anecdotal, fictional, semi-fictional, and satirical texts.

Supernal Music

Supernal Music was mainly known throughout the late 1990s for its mail order catalogue of underground music,[14] particularly extreme metal in all categories, but mainly black metal. Later on it became known in the underground black metal scene through a roster that included bands such as Astrofaes and Drudkh from Ukraine, Fleurety and Mayhem from Norway, and The Meads of Asphodel from the United Kingdom.

In 2008 the British anti-fascist magazine Searchlight published a critical article on fascist lyrics and imagery in some styles of black metal that included criticism of the label's newsletter for having featured Savitri Devi, Ernst Junger, Miguel Serrano, and Julius Langbehn on its covers and for the content of some of the CDs on offer.[15]

Discography

Benighted Leams
  • Caliginous Romantic Myth (1996)
  • Astral Tenebrion (1998)
  • Ferly Centesms (2004)
  • Obombrid Welkins (2006)

Bibliography
  • Mister. Iron Sky Publishing, 2009; ISBN 978-0-9561835-0-7
  • Ja, Afrika muss zur Hölle gehen. Unitall Verlag, 2011; ISBN 978-3-905937-43-5
  • Hesketh-Prichard, Vernon, Where Black Rules White (foreword), The Palingenesis Project (2012); ISBN 978-0-9561835-8-3
  • Warum Konservative immer verlieren, Antaios (2013); ISBN 978-3-944422-35-0
  • Lovecraft, H.P. The Conservative (foreword), Arktos (2013); ISBN 978-1-907166-30-3
  • Robison, John. Proofs of a Conspiracy (foreword), The Palingenesis Project, 2014; 978-1-909606-03-6
  • The Art of Alex Kurtagic. Spradabach Publishing, 2019. ISBN 978-1-9993573-0-6

Translations
  • The Golden Tread by Miguel Serrano. The Palingenesis Project, 2017.

References
  1. Dreaming of a Parallel Culture Searchlight (April 2012) p. 5-8
  2. Kurtagic, Alex, The Art of Alex Kurtagic: 1989 - 2017 (London: Spradabach Publishing, 2019) p. xi-xii
  3. Wegner, Nils. "Ein Essayist des Eigenen", Junge Freiheit, 24 April 2012.(in German)
  4. Spracken, Karl. The Meaning and Purpose of Leisure: Habermas at the End of Modernity (Basingstoke and New York, 2009) p. 127
  5. Spracken, p. 127
  6. "Warum Konservative immer verlieren", Junge Freiheit 19/13 (3 May 2013), p. 3
  7. Lichtmesz, Martin. "Alex Kurtagić: Mister" Archived 10 September 2011 at the Wayback Machine, Sezession.de, December 2009.(in German)
  8. "Benighted Leams – Encyclopaedia Metallum". The Metal Archives. Retrieved 20 November 2016.
  9. Terrorizer Magazine No. 38 (January 1997)
  10. Terrorizer Magazine No. 126 (December 2004)
  11. Neil Aldis and James Sherry. Heavy Metal Thunder: Album Covers that Rocked the World, Mitchell Beazley (2006); ISBN 978-1-84533-195-5
  12. "Der Funke" über Alex Kurtagić Archived 7 June 2013 at the Wayback Machine, Sezession.de, 7 May 2013. (in German)
  13. Kleine-Hartlage, Manfred. "Kurtagić: Warum Konservative immer verlieren", Pi, 13 April 2013.(in German))
  14. Keith Kahn-Harris, Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge (Oxford: Berg, 2007), p. 64
  15. A darker shade of black (Issues 391–402), Searchlight (2008)
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