Iterum Nata for Prog Folk

Founded in 2017, Iterum Nata is the psychedelic folk-rock alias of Finnish singer/songwriter, social worker and author Jesse Heikkinen. With a guitar style explicitly inspired by David Gilmour, Robert Fripp and Mikael Åkerfeldt, Heikkinen's atmospheric music is darkly melodic and lyrical, influenced by paganism and the occult, and described as a cross between neofolk groups Rome, Tenhi, Prag 83 and :Of the Wand & the Moon:, and the progressive folk of Strawbs, Linda Perhacs, Espers and early King Crimson. 

The former lead guitarist of Hexvessel, the Oulu-born Heikkinen plays in a number of musical projects ranging from extreme metal to children's music. One of them, The Aeon, performed as the house band for an Aleister Crowley-themed theatre production, with Heikkinen in a minor role as Jimmy Page. Inspired by Crowley's Thelema and a desire to write and play his own original songs, Heikkinen moved to Tampere and started Iterum Nata, Latin for "Born Again," both an appropriate descriptor for his new artistic beginning and "a reference to how a person must always redefine himself...in the wake of a powerful experience."

Iterum Nata's four LPs are loose concept albums, beginning with 2017's self-titled, which focused on the quest "to find the Godhead within." Their 2018 sophomore, The Course of Empire, was issued by Inverse Records in 2018, dealing with "the seven Hermetic laws and the dialogue between birth and death." Based on the album's strength, Svart Records and Secret Trees (owned by Hexvessel's Mathew "Kvohst" McNerney) distributed the group's third LP, Bardo Disorder, in 2020. A musing on the Buddhist concept of the spirit's intermediate state and the consequences of the disruption of the death-rebirth cycle, the album features guest appearances from Finnish singer-songwriter Mara Balls, Hexvessel multi-instrumentalist Kimmo Helén and Heikkinen's parents. Iterum Nata released Trench of Loneliness, a meditation on loss and isolation, via Nordvis in 2023.

"Trench of Loneliness" (2023)

"Bardo Disorder" (2020)

"The Course of Empire" (2018)

"Iterum Nata" (2017)