![]() If the current dungeon-synth wave recedes for good, it'll be a shame. "The avalanche from 2018 to 2021," he concludes, "seems to have slowed." "It got tiresome for people to sift through so much of that to find needles in a haystack. "Grandma's Cottage and Diplodocus - I love both of those, but they spawned a slew of imitators that started saturating the Bandcamp tag," says Ross Major, who makes dungeon synth as Malfet and runs the Pacific Threnodies label. Just as dungeon synth at its best can galvanize you to ride into battle, Grandma's Cottage can transport you to a shag rug by a crackling fire, munching ginger snaps.īut under dungeon synth's expanded umbrella, albums like that are the exception, not the rule. For instance, the somewhat infamous 2019 eponymous debut by Grandma's Cottage has its defenders, on something of an ASMR level. To be fair, not all of the offshoots are provocative slop. "The low barrier is starting to show," Hartman says. If this renaissance falls apart completely, it will probably be due to Bandcamp's tagging system - where bad actors can call anything dungeon synth and get away with it. ![]() Because at press time, dungeon synth is in danger of becoming diluted beyond recognition - and, as a result, ruined. (The caption: "Uncomfy Synth.")īut on the main, they're concerned about where the music is headed. ![]() Bard Algol recently released a T-shirt emblazoned with a 17th-century illustration depicting a man with a peg-leg playing a keyboard. To a degree, dungeon synth's old guard can roll with the trolls - or even troll them back. "There's one guy who put out a pizza record," he adds. "What the f- is this s-?" Bard Argol asks, citing the recent introduction of something called "hot dog synth." Wayfarer, who crafts immersive and expansive works as Fen Walker and Frost Clad, cites an album-length "dungeon synth" tribute to Guy Fieri, the goateed meme king of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives fame. Bard Argol, who declines to use his real name for this article, also played a prominent role in forging this style he founded the label Dark Age Productions in Minnesota all the way back in 1994.īut he, too, is perplexed as to where this subculture is headed. While grunge reigned, the music now known as dungeon synth quietly sprang up in Europe and America alike. "It's music that's so beautiful, you can't touch it." "For me, dungeon synth is the music that you hear in your dreams," says John Hartman, who runs Lightfall Records and performs under banners like Temple of the Fractured Light and Majesty of Oceans. (Although Ellefsen rejects this characterization, and clearly states that he has never pursued this in his own music, the younger guard interviewed for this article wholeheartedly embraces it.)Ībove all, dungeon synth is profoundly transportive, deeply felt, shamelessly escapist, and sometimes uncomfortably earnest. Think of a half-remembered soundtrack to an MS-DOS version of The Lord of the Rings that may have never existed. Think of the brief atmospheric interludes on black-metal albums, stretched to sprawling lengths.
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