Osi and the Jupiter

It’s always the quiet ones, isn’t it.

Back in September, I was standing at the edge of Prophecy Fest 2024, quietly soaking in the mood. Then Thurnin sat down with his guitar. No ceremony. No bravado. Just sound—soft, steady, strangely ancient.

I’ve been listening to his music ever since. Not obsessively. But regularly. Like a candle you forget you lit, still flickering hours later.

You could say he was my introduction to Dark Folk.

I’ve been carefully peeking through the veil ever since.

Look. I wasn’t trying to have yet another moment.

I wasn’t planning on anything. I was just prepping for Fortress Festival 2025. Osi and the Jupiter are on the line-up. I hadn’t listened properly yet. I hit shuffle.

That was it. No context. No expectations. Just a name and some vaguely pagan album art.

And then I didn’t stop.

Not dramatically. Not all at once. But over the next few days, I realised I’d made my way through almost their entire discography. Some albums more than once. Some songs on quiet repeat without meaning to.

It stopped being research somewhere along the way.

And started feeling like something else.

Like a quiet kind of company. A mood I didn’t want to leave.

Dark Folk, Neo Folk, Pagan Folk—whatever flavour you prefer—is what happens when you take traditional acoustic instruments and use them to channel something older. Something quiet. Something that aches.

The result is music that sits somewhere between ritual and atmosphere. Often acoustic, often slow, usually soaked in melancholy and spiritual residue. It’s not dramatic. It’s deliberate. Less about hooks, more about haunted stillness.

It’s also a genre with a bit of—an image problem.

Let’s just say it’s attracted its fair share of people with alarming rune obsessions and questionable politics.

(More on that in a second. Briefly.)

Osi and the Jupiter hail from Kent, Ohio—an unexpected place for music that sounds like it should be echoing through ancient forests, but here we are. The project is the work of multi-instrumentalist Sean Kratz, accompanied by Kakophonix, whose cello playing adds a grounded, mournful depth to nearly everything it touches.

The name comes from Kratz’s two German Shepherds: Osirus and Jupiter. They’d been part of it from the beginning—important enough to lend their names to the work. Osirus died in 2022. Jupiter followed in 2023. That wasn’t the source of the project’s heaviness—but knowing it, the name now carries a different stillness. A different kind of love.

Since 2015, the music has shifted gradually from a Nordic-folk palette toward a more Anglo folk-inspired sound—less frost-covered ruins, more damp stone and soil. Always slow, always deliberate. Less about tradition in the historical sense, more about mood, memory, and spiritual texture.

Six albums. A handful of EPs. A few covers that hit harder than they have any right to.

There’s something fundamentally unreviewable about Osi and the Jupiter.

You can talk about the structure. The albums. The instrumentation. Sure. But that’s like trying to explain fog by describing water droplets.

The truth is: this music is a feeling.

A longing so thick you could bottle it. A sadness that doesn’t need a reason.

I don’t really have a favourite.

Some albums lean more instrumental (Nordlige Rúnaskog is a mood-heavy monster). Others bring in vocals that feel like spells whispered over cold stones (Stave, Songs From the Grave). The earlier releases feel more ritualistic—immersive, dense, like soundscapes you fall into without a map. The later ones shift toward something more singer-songwriter in feel. More structured. More voice.

But it all works. It all feels like part of the same thread.

I love Kratz’s voice. Especially when it’s just him and a guitar—bare, steady, unadorned. I’m especially taken with the David Gilmour cover There’s No Way Outta Here. It's one of those where you  just sort of sit back and think, yes, ruin me further, why not.

And don’t get me started on their version of Nights in White Satin.

Actually, do.

It’s everything the original was trying to be—without the soft-rock cheese. Just the ache. Amplified. Slowed down. Stripped bare. All atmosphere, no ego.

This one completely ruined me. But of course it did—I'm a total sucker for these kinds of songs.

Same reason I still haven’t emotionally recovered from Déhà’s cover of  The Power of Love.

There’s just something about this kind of raw, slow-burning devotion that cuts straight through.

And this version? It’s perfect.

Neofolk has its issues.

Some of the early artists were openly aligned with far-right ideologies. Some still are. The imagery—runestones, myths, "the old ways"—has long been vulnerable to co-option by people who think heritage is more important than empathy.

It’s a real problem. And it hasn’t entirely gone away.

If you want to understand the broader context, Shane Burley’s piece in Protean Magazine is excellent:

Tradition and Resistance: Reclaiming Neofolk for Antifascism.

But no—I’m not here for blood-and-soil nostalgia.

I’m here for cellos.

For grief.

For the silence between trees.

My longing isn’t for empire. It’s for connection.

Not the past. The deep.

So yes—Neofolk has baggage.

It matters. It’s worth confronting. 

But that’s not what this article is about.

This one’s about the feeling.

The way this music sits with you.

The way it stirs something old. Something tender. Something unspeakable.

So don’t just throw Osi and the Jupiter on in the background while answering emails. You’ll miss it. This music asks for your full attention—quiet, still, intentional.

Put on headphones. Make tea. Or pour a glass of something that burns a little.

Go for a walk through the woods.

Touch some bloody grass.

Watch the sun rise. Or set.

And let yourself be buried by this beautiful and overbearing feeling of longing for something you’ve never actually lived or witnessed—but miss anyway.