About Astralseid
Astralseid makes music for you to either lie down and journey within, or, even better, dance naked around a huge bonfire. Deep drones, booming rhythms and ethereal vocals takes you out of time and brings you inwards, towards your own core.
The project was started late in 2018 with the release of the demo song: Skydance. May 2020 the first digital album, “Spirit Symbiosis” , was released. A deep and atmospheric psybient (psychedelic ambient) album. In November 2020 the next digital album, “Shamanic Love“, found its way to all streaming platforms. A much more tribal and a bit “darker” album. In August 2021 another album was dropped: “Electric Love“. An album best described as psychedelic fusion or psychedelic ethno.
Finding inspiration within nature and the nature of human consciousness, the songs are made through improvisation and exploration of sounds, rhythms and melodies. All steps of the production process are done by Gustav Holberg with assistance from Rúnahild, in their off-grid, earthen cabin situated on an organic mountain-farm in Western Norway. Gustav has been making acoustic music for decades, mostly in the nordic folk and experimental genres. Combining a multitude of instruments and vocal styles with electronic sounds and beats gave birth to the hybrid called Astralseid.
Gustav Holberg
My music has always been an integral part of my spirituality and my spirituality is deeply connected to nature. This all reflects on to all the music I make. In concerts I prefere improvisations, as that is when I can channel the energies of the universe, where I can be one with the sounds and travel the landscapes of the mind and soul. For me seid is music and music is seid.
I live a “primitive” life compared to most people in the western culture. Partly in a cabin in the woods and partly at an organic mountain farm. A life with natural surroundings where I can follow the flow of mother nature.
For new years eve the year 2000 I was asked to do a viking music concert at a private cultural event. I gathered some friends, we made something we thought could sound like viking music and off we went. This concert led me to the path that has taken me where I am today. We got booked for several historical reenactment markets around Norway and thus the band “Ehwaz” was born. After three years of concerts and two CD releases, the band disbanded. We were all young and naive back then, but the truth it that this band sparked off many musical careers specificly within the viking genres. Maria Franz, now lead vokal of “Heilung“, Kjell Braaten now doing great stuff on his own and is playing for “Wardruna“. We have been doing that shit since then.
Even before Ehwaz, I had my own solo project: “Origami Disharmonika“. It started as a noise and dark ambient project, but slowly evolved into something else, with more of a folk and tribal feel, thus the name did not fit any more. Origami Disharmonika had only one release: “Underworld“. This was a pure web release. A page with images, poetry and mp3’s for download. The web-page and its contents is nowere to be found, lost in a hard drive crash years ago.
For many years I have also been working together with Benny Braaten in his project “Folket bortafor nordavinden“. Yet another viking related project. Doing lectures on ancient music and instruments, concerts and ceremonies. This is a project with lots of humor and joy, but also with deep and sincere spirituality. As of now Folket has one CD-release: “Sagnamadr” and another in the tube to be released some time in 22/23 or something.
For some years I have been travelling to Sweden a couple of times each year to hold courses on the drum and voice as spiritual tools. From this another release has been born: “Rhythms of the Soul: The Four Elements“. This is not a musical piece as such, but rather a tool for meditation and spiritual journeying. It is a CD with mostly drumming. A collaboration of me, Runahild, Lasse Ström and Viktoria Nilsson.
I have studied indian classical music under Ustad Faiyaz Ali Khan, a sarangi maestro of Varanasi, India.
I am also a storyteller, actor, course instructor, artisan, farmer and bushcrafter.
Frequent collaborator: Rúnahild
My love for nature gives birth to my artistic expression through music and photography.
I created my first one-woman project Eliwagar in 2006. I have composed and released several albums of heathen folk/folk rock music during its 10 years of existence. In 2016, I decided to end Eliwagar and release my music as Runahild, a name I had been using as my artist name since 2005. This decision was mainly influenced by a shift of inspiration, from dreaming myself in a far distant past to expressing personal spiritual experiences that shapes my life and journey in this lifetime. I define this project as “ethereal folk”.
In summer 2018, I felt compelled to compose electronic music as my taste for this kind of music grew considerably. I just met again with Gustav and our reconnection felt like coming home. He already had some knowledge of how to write electronic music while it was a very new direction for me and its secrets still had to be unveiled. We both felt this call to create something out of the typical musical genre we are usually associated with and so started the exciting journey the creation of Astralseid has been taking us on since.