BJARKAN - The Sound of Before and Now
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BJARKAN
The Sound of Before and Now
A Neo/Nordic Folk Music Project by Birk Garlef Drude
HOW IT STARTED...
Journeying to the past to find a way forward
Back in 2022, I decided to hit the reset button on my musical career.
Partially because at that time the reset button was unintentionally hit for me, courtesy of a very sudden harddrive failure that erased a lot of my work, but mostly because I was finally able to create what I always wanted to create: Nordic Folk music.
BJARKAN acts as my final rebrand into this new direction: a musical project solely dedicated to crafting a unique musical tapestry made up of Norse Mythology, Nordic culture, a strong connection to nature and a good dose of experimentation
BIOGRAPHY
BJARKAN is the stage name under which German composer and filmmaker Birk Garlef Drude creates a vast tapestry of Neo/Nordic Folk Music.
Birk Garlef Drude grew up in various small villages in Germany and stayed there until he graduated from school.
Very early he became interested in making films and composing music and after getting his hands on some decent software the latter became a side hobby.
After school Birk moved to Carlisle in England to study Film & Television Production at the University of Cumbria. It was here that he decided to turn his hobby into something more serious and started to compose soundtracks for various small film projects he was involved in.
Throughout the years Birk worked on a variety of projects as a camera operator and composer, as well as a location marshal on big film productions shooting in the Lake District area.
His experimental short film 'His Last Minutes' was screened at the Keswick Film Festival 2018 and won at the Carlisle Film Fling festival in 2019.
His latest work as cinematographer and composer was the independent short film 'Searching For Evil' in 2019 and his latest projects as a film composer include the 2021 short film 'What's Left Unsaid' and 'The Cost', which was released in 2024.
Between doing freelancing work and pursuing his own musical career, Birk has also worked as an AV Technician for the University of Cumbria and as a videographer for VetPartners, where he travelled around the UK as a one man camera crew to plan, shoot, edit and deliver a variety of marketing videos.
In 2022 Birk shifted his focus on creating Nordic Folk music, with the first project being the album 'Ragnarok'.
Since then, he has dedicated most of his free time to exploring the musical landscapes of Norse mythology and Nordic Folk.