who the hell is down with dungeon synth

look to be honest sometimes I think it's kinda bullshit but I sure do buy a lot of it for the other times when it feels like a pretty perfect synthesis of nostalgic urges & narrative drive -- much of it feels intensely personal to me, which is weird, because the actual playing/composition is necessarily reliant on rigid structures. but on the right night? only some dungeon synth will do. list who you like here, talk about the ~deeper meaning~

are we extending this as far as forest synth (the brilliant Basarabian Hills) or hero synth (the also-brilliant Summoning)?

is this like music for avant-garde neckbeards?

i don't know much about dungeon synth but i want to be down with dungeon synth

after reading the description i'm pretty sure i was making dungeon synth using cakewalk when i was 8th grade

I don't really feel qualified to speak with any authority on dungeon synth, but I love the idea of the genre, and most everything I've heard by Chaucerian Myth is really compelling.

Is dungeon synth like this? (The first thing I learned how to play on the keyboard)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxzKTbu-aR0

are we extending this as far as forest synth (the brilliant Basarabian Hills) or hero synth (the also-brilliant Summoning)?

Summoning & Mortiis are basically ground zero for the style afaic. Summoning being a top 5 band for me probably accounts in part for how open I am to this stuff, their synth interludes have sort of burrowed into my brain

my top DS acts as of right now: Chaucerian Myth, who imo are on a higher level than any of their peers
Aokigahara (depressive suicidal Japanese dungeon synth)
Goblinrtropp

is this like music for avant-garde neckbeards?

my sense is that it's music by & for pretty solitary people who are into epic fantasy & other genre fiction & who have played a lot of video games by themselves

Thanks JCLC, will check out those recommendations (tt has been pushing Summoning on me and this year it's finally clicked)

Meanwhile here's the promised forest metal: https://basarabianhills.bandcamp.com/album/groping-in-a-misty-spread-2

I think if you make time for Chaucerian Myth you will come away semi-fanatic like me. Weird, challenging music

I'll start with the new one. Thank you

xxxxxp no that's Dungeons & Dragons Synth

I don’t think I’ve heard a lick of Dungeon Synth that I’m aware of but the name alone is powerful. I want it to feel like the Splatterhouse soundtrack.

https://youtu.be/mIDiZjKQbRQ

Listening to this stuff always makes me want to reinstall Heroes of Might and Magic III.

I second imago's love of Basarabian Hills. Lustre is also very much worthwhile.

As somebody who's been listening to a lot of Oblivion ambience compilations this week I would like to thank the panel for bringing this stuff to my attention

Morrowind and Icewind Dale would be my Jeremy Soule picks.

We listened to almost all of The Faerie Queen this morning! It was magical and so charming. We're taking a two-day break and may have found its soundtrack

Spenserian Myth

Chaucerian Myth has a RYM account with some amazing lists that could serve this thread well. (His 2018 best of has loads of stuff I'd never have heard of...and Daphne & Celeste, lol) Here's the most relevant list: https://rateyourmusic.com/list/aroliver/top-100-dungeon-synth-albums/

Obviously we're all going to have to check out Lunar Womb stat

Nice, thanks.

dungeon synth as a whole reminds me too much of that mortiis concert i saw once, though i hadn't heard chaucerian myth and it's got a good sound to it

only other dungeon synth that's clicked with me is "one myth" by garvalf, which is dungeon synth done on the zx spectrum sound chip. having said that unless you're into super primitive chiptune it probably won't be that enjoyable.

after reading the description i'm pretty sure i was making dungeon synth using cakewalk when i was 8th grade

OTM

For quite a while the only real engagement I had with this genre was listening to Depressive Silence II while hungover

I don't actually seek out DS too often but I tend to prefer the more lo-fi stuff with tape hiss and questionable creative decisions etc.

Like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grzaScsGyMk

And the crudely adorable

https://theherbalists.bandcamp.com/

I'm quite digging Garvalf!

Lunar Womb was sounding great earlier.

This Elfen is LOVELY

I love this stuff the same way I love, like, Signals by Rush, it evokes a strong sense of a prepubescent desire that is not laying any groundwork for adulthood but just a long riff on bizarre fantasy, sitting comfortably with magic, or inexplicable longing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=MBsU6ErOjDk

i have been on an IRL side quest since this thread was started but i'm settling down for a nice afternoon of Chaucerian Myth right now!

some of the best, subtlest, most sensitive dungeon synth I've heard yet here -- really immersive

https://gatekeeper2.bandcamp.com/album/sunnhild

A couple tracks into the Gatekeeper, and this is really beautiful. Thanks, JCLC!

that Chaucerian Myth RYM page is a real find, well done imago

Gatekeeper is what came to mind when this thread showed up. Also a bit of early Umberto here and there. Both of them are part of the Halloween playlist we use every year.

was hoping this would be a new groove for me.
but not getting the connection between a lot of what has been posted so far.
i.e. yet to understand exactly what is DS ?
when it came to retrosynth/outrun, the rules were quick and easy.
this time though i am clearly out of the loops.
Elfen vs Chaucerian Myth ?
also this stuff is way too lo-fi for me.

Surprised no one has mentioned Old Tower. He seems to be the most popular DS project going.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOqFr1AgYT4

just getting to The Faerie Queene -- wow, Chaucerian Myth just continues to grow & go places the others imo don't. that long bass-notes break in Book II -- the big chords at about the five-minute mark of Book I -- I am always, always surprised by the places CM finds to go.

to Mark E - yes - "lo fi" is kind of a quality of it, though there are many degrees of that -- but it's called "dungeon" because its single unifying trait is it's meant to recall the feel of being in an 8-bit dungeon -- as in, most notably I think, Zelda, but also Ys and other games. that's the jumping-off point for the sound & compositional & tonal approaches. CM is pushing this to the limit; there's nothing in the history of 8 or 16 bit gaming that reached that level of musical complexity. (case to be made that "complexity" isn't an affirmative value, yah yah, still CM feels just on a higher & better level than his peers.) Roman Master & lvthn are very much in the lo-fi-to-a-fault camp for me. but generally speaking most DS acts favor simpler production/tones even when the music gets more complex - it's meant to feel somewhat compressed.

Also a bit of early Umberto here and there

good call - there was a nostalgia-for-an-earlier-era-of-synth movement that was putting out tapes & whatnot a few years back - Umberto, Expo 70, others whose names escape me - who prefigure a lot of this stuff.

CM is awesome - not only arguably the leading practitioner of a not insignificant genre but almost certainly its primary chronicler and scholar as well

like, it is so great when a musician is also a scholar of their music

but it's called "dungeon" because its single unifying trait is it's meant to recall the feel of being in an 8-bit dungeon

ah ha .. ta for the clarification.
was wondering.
i was more focused on the synth aspect as opposed to the dungeon.
now i know for a fact this is not for me.

digging a lot of this stuff, tbh

was super into these in 2013...

abandoned places giantlands:
https://abandonedplaces.bandcamp.com/album/giantlands

which sounds like a haunted golden axe arcade cabinet

erang another world another time:
https://erang.bandcamp.com/album/another-world-another-time

which sounds like the title of the second song - "hymn to my teenage broken dreams"

...but I never really found anything else quite as satisfying. not back then, anyway. looks like I have some catching up to do.

i am somewhere between amused that this stuff exists and somewhat embarrassedly intrigued; it would've absolutely owned me when i was fourteen.
ten minutes in, I am still waiting for my first random encounter.

You are at a wedding reception. The bride is dressed in white leather and the reception is being catered by British Baking Show's Kim-Joy.
>GO EAST

erang another world another time:

― (⊙_⊙?) (original bgm)

this is not me

that "abandoned places" sounds pretty nice, like the soundtrack to a lost colin baker doctor who episode (possibly "yellow fever and how to cure it")

by and large though very little of the dungeon synth i've heard sounds as good as todd porter's tunes for the ultima vi soundtrack on a roland, which, yes, is a high bar to set, but the bar is there nonetheless:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yv__aZzmXBA

The new Chaucerian Myth is sounding amazing so far!

reliably great, growing w/every release

Piano intro sets this up as the Mellon Collie of Chaucerian Myth. Which I know may sound like cursing to JCLC but actually this album is entirely amazing.

The new new one sounds even better! Such melodies!

If you need an epic dsynth fix, Old Sorcery aka Warmoon Lord's Strange and Eternal is your ticket. Comes with a noticeable 70s/prog electro aura.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9sfnTGm5a8

Music to accompany an AD&D module that came with the record.

full album

it's not quite dungeon synth proper but i wrote a blog post this week about yuzo koshiro and motohiro kawashima's 1996 soundtrack to the playstation/saturn port of zork i

https://weirdthingsonbetamax.blogspot.com/2020/05/unsung-video-game-soundtracks-zork.html

fans of dungeon synth should definitely check it the hell out

New Daryl Groetsch dungeon synth side project:

https://endlessfog.bandcamp.com/releases

Was listening to that earlier. Very on point titlewise.

I haven't gone through the entire thread and listened to everything, but looking for music that splits the difference between dungeon synth and say Pink Floyd's More or Obscured by Clouds (i.e. psychedelic dungeon synth).

aka "acid dragon"

Digging this mushroom-themed dungeon synth album, great autumnal forest vibes:

https://mycologia.bandcamp.com/album/assorted-mushrooms-of-new-england

Alias of Adam Matlock, who has played with Anthony Braxton and seems to have many other dungeon synth aliases that I haven't explored yet.

loving this (aindulmedir), winter music for bibliophiles and hermits:

https://aindulmedir.bandcamp.com/album/the-winter-scriptures

just the jams i'm needing today, thx

NTS put out this compilation recently:
https://n-t-s.bandcamp.com/album/ascend
It serves as a primer to the genre as well as a deep dive into its 90s origins.

anybody have any comfy synth faves?

https://www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/58365/1/the-inside-story-of-comfy-synth-the-internets-snuggliest-microgenre?amp=1

A friend picked up a cache of this stuff secondhand - quite taken with Tiny Mouse's Little Ones Journey.

xxp i quite liked boomkat's review of that comp

Manna for BM fiends, D&D players and RPG questers; the next NTS compilation surveys the fetid bedroom-scape of dungeon synth music with a dozen gems plucked from obscure early ‘90s records.

‘Ascend’ holds a torch to black metal’s most atmospheric urges with exquisite, cherry-picked cuts compiled by Sam Strang with Bruno Halper (Emotional Rescue, NTS) and Will Dickson. Leading on from their expert surveys of private press folk, amapiano, and singeli, they turn sharply, bitterly inward with an icy grip of hard-to-find aces that can be hailed as the roots of what is now known as dungeon synth music.

The sound is surely familiar to dimples of black metal’s 2nd wave, and the sort of scene-setting, Midi-eval intros favoured by likes of Mortiis or dodgy cunt Burzum - particularly their inspiration from Tangerine Dream’s Conrad Schnitzler and Klaus Schulze that also leaches into ‘90s RPG computer games such as Diablo or indeed Skyrim in the modern day. Sniff your pits; you’ll know if that’s you: and if so, this set is another good excuse not to leave the house for as long as possible.

The fantasy begins with a stately invitation to join the kingdom of darkness extended by Evol (the Norwegian one), and proceeds from the enchanted pads of Corvus Neblus to the pulsating form of Asmorod, thru toens evoking flashbacks to kids TV gameshow ‘Nightmare’ in ‘Vindalv’s ’Swærfl Stimma’, taking in immersive durational wonders by Apeiron, Lunar Womb and Neptune Towers, beside the lustrous strings of Secret Stairways, and the wheeze of Kadotus609 primed to soundtrack alchemical experiments with Gatorade and Oreos or turn your next garage raid for rizlas and bacon into a gauntlet of suburban zombie NPCs and local hell-hounds.

ACE!!!

i am an indiscriminate lover of dungeon synth. i will listen to most of it. my fave comfy synth might be grandma's cottage though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtBjuWw1Xvw

I love the idea of dungeon synth / comfy synth etc, but I'm often let down by the execution. I assume this is meant more as background music for DnD sessions or something but it's very repetitive and there's very little change or dynamics in each piece. I'd just like it if there were a little more variety or change-ups

Also, is anyone else having difficulty reading that Dazed piece? On my laptop screen half the text is obscured by a menu box

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FP9_XmmmIk0

What! This rules! What is this genre?

(ventures upthread)

that is great

and for once the comments make it even better

So nice of Stevie Nicks to take a break from guiding a party through the Veil to catch the sweet tunes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5ns5uIK9EA

A couple of recent discoveries- Gothmog's Medieval Journeys got a reissue which I'm very tempted to pick up:
https://gothmog-northernsilence.bandcamp.com/album/medieval-journeys
Lo-fi and black metal inflected and a bit of a gem IMO.

Hedge Wizard's Neighborwoods is much more straight-up synth but with (to my uneducated ears) the sounds of the hurdy gurdy and sackbutt.
https://hedgewizard.bandcamp.com/album/neighborwoods

There's always the slight suspicion that the people involved with dungeon synth might want to hit you over the head with a bladder on a stick while wearing a jester's hat, if they could be persuaded to leave their bedrooms, but I suppose that's all part of the fun.

One of my favourites of the year; https://flickersfromthefen.bandcamp.com/album/stoned-in-gielinor

"You've just ordered Pizza Hut and a 2L Mountain Dew. You've loaded up RuneScape on your PC. No school tomorrow. Your parents don't care if you stay up all night long. A perfect Summer night.
You are 28 years old. The year is 2023."

live show also fun; does include wizard hats and also a fullish band setup including some violin.

oops thats the old one! the one from this year = https://flickersfromthefen.bandcamp.com/album/stoned-in-gielinor-ii

nice, that's verging on the Enya side of things (not an insult!) and they seem to have a winning way with a melody. The self-description is great too!

Here are some 2024 favs. I think I discovered all of these through The Dungeon Synth Archives YouTube channel.

Easnadh - Ein Kampf Gegen Licht

Sylfver - Realm Of Eternal Rain

Raathgard - Twilight Over Forgotten Realms

Umbral Regency - Primeval Lure

Former ILXor Jeff T has a nice new guide up:

https://theshfl.com/collection/Darksynth