Aura - Rain (2013)

You proceed into the interior of the tower, looking upward to see that it stretches straight up into the clouds, which have somehow made their way into the building. There are circular metal walkways every ten feet up, with ladders between each floor. Along the walls of each floor, as far as you can see from your current vantage point, are wine racks, most cluttered full with bottles. You proceed up the ladder, onto the second floor and inspect the bottles more closely. They seem to be grouped together according to their vintage, with labels indicating they were produced this year. You climb up to the next floor, glancing around at these bottles to see they are slightly older. You keep climbing, with no particular destination in mind, but only to satisfy your curiosity at what you will find. Is it wine bottles all the way up? How far up does it go? You keep climbing and climbing, for what feels like hours, your arms and legs aching, when you suddenly find yourself surrounded by fog, the cloud layer. You stop off at that floor to rest, laying on your back. You turn and glance down at the massive drop below, with a stomach lurch and immediate sense of dizzy vertigo. You quickly focus on the wine bottles to steady yourself.  These racks are mostly empty compared to the lower levels.  You stand up and walk over to the nearest rack, pulling out a random bottle. It is shaped differently than the bottles from the first few floors, more narrow. There is no label, perhaps worn off by the droplets of condensation covering the glass. You wonder how sitting for so long at such an altitude might affect the flavor? Perhaps it would not taste like any ordinary wine at all... You look around for a bottle opener.

At one point back in 2013 I made a note of this album, Aura – Rain, wondering if it could be classified as dungeon synth. I decided it was of course, but didn't write anything more about it. I can't even remember how I found out about it. It is wistfully sad, but not in a bleak despondent way, but rather like a cleansing release of troubles, a comfortable hopeful melancholy. According to the Youtube description, most of the songs were made in the late 2000s, and there is something about the sound that very much reminds me of that time period, when I was first learning music production and how to use a DAW myself. It is raw and primitive in a way that feels authentic, like it was just the best the artist could do at the time, rather than intentionally made in a lofi style. There are a lot of odd idiosyncracies, like unbalanced mixing of the different synth layers, and inconsistent timing, but that only adds to the charm, and there is still a feeling of focused intent. It feels direct and honest, and so it is easy to get swept up in the misty contemplative atmospheres that I believe the artist intended to conjure.

There are many albums now that do these things well, and this album is not unique for its influence or innovation, unlike most of the albums I try to focus on with this blog. So why review this one? I wanted to discuss how music ages, and I think Aura – Rain is special in that way, at least for me. I listened to it once or twice when it was first released, then basically forgot about it until now, over a decade later. I did not take much notice of it when it was released, seeming like just someone's early attempts at music production, and I would not take much notice if it were released today. And yet, because the project ended with this album and seems to have been forgotten by everyone, it now resonates for me like a pure time capsule preserving the enthusiastic simplicity of dungeon synth in 2013. But there's also the wistfulness of wondering, what could have been had this project continued? Very fitting for the rainy melancholic theme.  I find all of those elements come together to give it some sort inherent charged magic, some sort of mysterious essence or energy between the sparse simple notes, built up by the long years of unknown dormancy.

So many albums coming out these days do not get the attention they deserve, and so many seem inexplicable in our current era. I think if an album goes totally unnoticed the month it is released, and even if it is hidden away in complete obscurity for decades, it can become all the more resonant and powerful because of that. It is like all those obscure old 90s tapes that went totally unnoticed until the passage of time allowed people to see their limitations in a different way, as distinguishing traits of art from a certain time and place rather than just diminishing defects. So what will be the unique limitations of our current era in 2025 that we might be nostalgic about decades from now? It is a comforting thought that perhaps all the albums being sincerely made now have the potential to eventually become future classics, at least from some individual perspectives. Aura – Rain is such an album I believe, one that is greatly elevated by time and obscurity, and might continue to grow more interesting as the years pass.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TACH2NPStS8

Vindkaldr - Enchantments of Old Lore (2015)

 

 

You climb carefully down the ivy caked against the stone wall, until you make your way to the ground, arms shaking from the strain. You look around to find yourself in what was once a garden, now overgrown so densely that it seems like a jungle. Roots twist gnarling every which way through the soil. Vines cascade all along the packed treeline. Bugs, birds, and some unknown animals in the distance all chipper and hum in a chorus of permeating nature. You wonder to yourself how long this place must've been abandoned to get like this? Was it at one time neat and orderly, with long stretches of clear flat grass and carefully-sectioned foliage? Or even when it might've once been bustling with people, frolicking and fighting in their way, were they happy to let the wilderness encroach into their domain? You walk steadily along, navigating through the thick underbrush, until you reach an open area of paved stone, a large square clearing. In the center is a strange looking tower, intricately detailed with carved embellishments, stretching so far into the sky that you have to squint to see it, covering your eyes from the glare of the sun now peeking through the clouds. There is a cliff on one side of the square, with a waterfall rushing down its side and into a channel through the center of the stone walkway. You see the door of the tower is open, and you proceed inward.

Enchantments of Old Lore is quite a well-known album at this point, and from what I remember was popular even around the time it was released. That was not from any sort of promotional hype, but simply the music itself being so immediately affecting, obviously beautiful to anyone who would take the time to listen. The mood is deeply solemn, reverential, contemplative, and modest, but in awe of some vast grandeur of being. If ever one wanted to make the case that dungeon synth could be spiritual, this album would be a prime example. The composition is a bit sparse and minimal, soft analog-style synth pads drift and waltz in a vast cavernous temple of reverb. There are only ever a handful of layers, generally playing close notes and similar sounds, which all blend together in an echoey fusion. There is a very human organicness, in that everything seems recorded live and loose, even seemingly improvisational at times. I doubt there is any midi quantization going on here. I think you can really feel the artist's focused inspiration in the performance itself. The melodies are mostly simple and unadorned, but quite gorgeous, acting in a very focused way to transport the listener to a place of serene introspection.

When I really think about the surface details of Enchantments of Old Lore, it seems not so straight-up dungeon synth, at least not in the way I used to conceive it. I used to identify rigid riff-based melodic structures, similar to early black metal, as being a distinguishing compositional characteristic. And for the synths I felt sample-based rompler textures were more essential to the dungeon sound, and the more futuristic synthesized sounds of analog and virtual analog style subtractive synthesis usually felt anachronistic, except when hidden just as pads in the background or for a rare moment of otherworldliness. Here pretty much all we get are those very synthy sounds, and not the rigid riff-based structures, but rather a more ethereal floating style of composition, all which would make this album more akin to winter synth, new age, or ambient generally, rather than dungeon synth. So it seems a bit contradictory to even consider this album "dark dungeon music," and yet I still can't shake the feeling that it is planted squarely in the center of the vortex. So that brings me to a couple of different conclusions, firstly that winter synth is dungeon synth and maybe always has been, and secondly, how "true" an album is really depends more on the vibes and attitude of the artist rather than any objective details about the music.

I feel a hesitation in writing about this album, due only to its relative popularity. I was actually reluctant to even listen to it for a few years after it was released because it had so much attention on it. I feel like that is not really fair to the music or the artist though, because if anything it seems like it's trying to resist exposure, and with a track title like "In Solitude Until The End Of Time," I certainly would not think Vindkaldr was trying to be a household name. Sometimes that can make a work all the more appealing to a large audience though, especially in a scene so fascinated by obscurity. But I remember the first time I listened to this album, a few years after it was released, I approached it with an attitude of, "Alright, let's see what all the fuss is about," and was blown away. I have not had quite the same reaction to some of the big hits of other artists the past decade or so, but some of those were even more popular and did not seem to have the same hype-resistant aspect, and so I was perhaps not as willing to be open-minded. I think this is very much a shortcoming on my part and is partially why I've had such a hard time keeping up with this blog. For some reason I have this feeling that if anyone else is talking about a particular album online then it would be lame for me to also do so. But I think Enchantments of Old Lore is a strong reminder that often things are popular for good reason. To deny ourselves the experience of things just because they're trendy is to be as slavish to the crowd as only following the trends. Ideally we should be able to appreciate things on their own merits, whether they are world-famous or completely unknown.

Even though most people reading this are probably already well-familiar with Enchantments of Old Lore, I'd say give it another spin.  It's great on the first listen and remains great after many more.  There is a timeless beauty about it, and it is a touchstone of the genre which I think any music lover could appreciate.

https://vindkaldr.bandcamp.com/album/enchantments-of-old-lore

Forgotten Pathways - A Long Way Home (2015)

You are lost deep within the bowels of a castle. It is not a bright regal castle of majestic grandeur, but rather a cramped, muggy, cavelike place, and fully dark, with no light source other than the flickering candle in your hand, spurring every nearby shape to come alive with dancing shadows. It is like swimming in shadows, swarmed by a legion of silent shadowy ghost-fish. Occasionally you seem to hear strange noises from distant rooms. You call out, to no response but your own halting breath and pounding heart. You try to chase the sound, only to stumble upon another locked door, as you shakily fumble with your jangling keyring, methodically trying each until one finally clicks into place and turns, but now doubting whether you heard anything at all. And so you continue to wander the castle, candle in one hand, keyring in the other, toward no particular destination other than continued movement. And eventually you happen upon a window, revealing a tangled garden in the courtyard below, densely overgrown and beneath a cloudy grey sky, but beautiful in contrast to the dark gloom of the stone halls.  You think you might be able to climb down the ivy along the outside wall...

I was reminded about this album somewhat recently, when trying to come up with a list of ten albums for Kaptain Carbon's Revival Vote thread on Reddit. I was able to decide on nine without much deliberation, all albums I had discussed here previously to some extent. But for the tenth I kept cycling through albums that I greatly appreciated and yet felt more represented the post-revival era. And for some reason my mind kept drifting back to this album, Forgotten Pathways – A Long Way Home. I was never able to properly appreciate it back when it was released, as excited as I was for the return of the legendary artist behind Shrouded In Mystery. I remember listening to it quite a few times, wondering how I might write about such an album, and was not even sure whether I actually considered it to be "dungeon synth." I could never quite figure out why, the composition seemed perhaps too dense, ornate, and dynamic, and it did not really have a synth sound whatsoever, or even much of a sampler sound, but instead sounding more like real acoustic orchestral instruments a lot of the time.   However it doesn't really fit neatly in neoclassical darkwave, dark ambient, soundtrack music, or any other established genre I can think of.  In this interview Cedric says, "... while I acknowledge Forgotten Pathways to be categorized as Dungeon Synth and can well live with that, I still feel about it as something more or less genre-independent and do favor the term „Medieval Ambient“ in lack of a better one."  Of course, the way people think of "dungeon synth" has expanded a lot since that interview in 2017, so perhaps Cedric would have a different take on it these days, but I for one would definitely consider A Long Way Home to be dungeon synth now.

Even though the album is overtly about fairy tales, the feeling I get from the music is that it is very much rooted in reality. Not fully escapist, but rather confronting the strifes and struggles of lived experience indirectly, metaphorically. There are many dungeon synth albums now that can be described similarly, but I think before A Long Way Home most dungeon synth had more of a "high fantasy" inclination, to create other worlds and spaces fully removed from the often painful and boring mundane reality of day-to-day life. But often we must face that reality, and to do so with art can give us the strength and provide meaning and dignity to those difficulties we must endure. I am not sure how much it directly influenced what would come afterward, or if it anticipated where things would naturally be heading, but to me this album feels like one of the first of its kind, charting the course for a style we hear quite often in many projects today, bringing fantastical romanticism into our otherwise ordinary experience of the world.

There is a grinding, churning quality to the music. A determined march into denser and darker forest, as the plants and birds start looking less familiar. There is a vaguely exotic quality to the melodies at times, feeling as if they could be depicting some distant land, or some ancient tribal village of the past. The densely layered and widely varied percussive samples add to this effect, creating a warlike feeling, of prehistoric armies building up their defenses. For as moody and cerebral as this album is, I feel like there is a strong influence from Basil Poledouris' Conan the Barbarian soundtrack. There is a lot more structural movement than in traditional dungeon synth, dynamic dissonance, tension and release, a lot more complex and sophisticated songwriting.  In this interview Cedric says, "I know what you mean concerning the certain style of early 90s synthesizer sound, on the other hand I found this to be quite limiting. Using a sequencing program provides not only better sounding samples, but offers much more possibilities to use effects, to fine-tune, to work more complex. Using the keyboard wasn’t so much a choice of sound or style, but more one of finances and talent." I wonder if Cedric was sort of trying to prove his capabilities with A Long Way Home? Of course, the simplicity of albums like Shrouded In Mystery is often what draws many people to the genre, but I think that does not necessarily diminish the value of highly-complex works like A Long Way Home, rather just such albums require more effort to appreciate, many listens and sometimes focused study, which can sometimes make it all the more rewarding.

So how to study A Long Way Home? Well, for those who are well-versed in music theory I imagine there's a lot to chew on here. I am not, so I can just sort of reflect on how it affects my mood and imaginative thinking, and just processing that dynamic journey over repeated listens. One can also consider it as a producer, trying to notice the many distinct layers individually, the careful ornate craftsmanship of each track. And additionally I think one can engage with this album in a way that is unique and specific to its themes, to read old fairy tales while it plays in the background. I'm not sure about all of them, but most of the track titles reference a specific story from the Brothers Grimm. I read several of these while listening, "The Goose Girl" ("A Horses Head") and "The Juniper Tree" ("Bury Me Under a Juniper Tree"), and found that the combination elevated both the music and the stories. In a strange way the dense rhythms of the album seem to make more sense when sitting in contrast to the song-like repetition of those old stories. And just the general atmosphere, of a dark, dangerous, sometimes hostile but enchanted world, with its own wild mysterious natural justice to ultimately hold dominion in the end, it all fits together well. Hearing the music while reading the fairy tales gives a sense of the experience being rooted in something deeply real, almost primordial.

I'm still not sure I would necessarily consider this album as exemplifying traditional "dark dungeon music" in the same way as Shrouded in Mystery, but for sure this album is a classic of the dungeon synth revival, and I feel was one of the first to usher in this much more grounded and sophisticated style of fantasy music. It has now been a decade since the release of A Long Way Home, and I'm hoping eventually we will get another Forgotten Pathways album, whether it continues with this sound, returns to the old sound, or pushes off into yet another innovative new direction.

 

https://forgottenpathways.bandcamp.com/album/a-long-way-home 

Dungeon Siege West (2025)

In a forest clearing amidst a small crowd, beautiful live music, birds chirping, the smell of trees and a whiff of incense coming from the stage, the quiet periodic buzz of the fog machine, the view of the musician between mossy branches, it is somehow both serene and yet a sensory overload. The most striking thought in my mind at this moment is imagining all the distinct vast rich inner worlds of creative experience I am surrounded by in this unique setting. What deep unknowable wonders of dreaming have brought us all here to such a place?

I'd never been to any music festival before, but the circumstances of this particular Dungeon Siege West made me feel compelled to attend. It was a very new experience for me, and so I can only really comment from my own limited perspective, but I found it to be quite fun and profoundly beautiful in many ways.  It was a camping festival in a forest.  I did not camp on festival grounds, but rather with a few friends at different location, so I definitely enjoyed being out in nature the whole time, but I do wonder what it would've been like to mingle at the firepit before and after the shows.  Finally having a chance to talk about dungeon synth in-person with people who are as immersed it in it as myself was so exciting! Sorry to anyone I may have awkwardly rambled at, but I appreciate everyone there being so cool and friendly.

I wish I could speak specifically about the various artists that performed, but I wasn't able to see all the shows, and at times there was so much going on that it was a bit hard to focus, but I really enjoyed each one that I saw. My general impression was that the lineup of artists did well to showcase nearly all the myriad styles that make up the scene, traditional dark dungeon music, darker blackened dirges, upbeat fantastical pastoral style, dungeon noise, experimental modern dance styles, kosmische musik/berlin school, and more. And I feel like all of the artists exemplify their different approaches, if not singularly defining them. I was especially interested how some artists performed live vocals and even sang, an aspect of dungeon synth that still seems to be evolving and not fully established.  I was impressed by the sheer virtuosity of instrument-playing at times, with some missed notes and a few small mishaps here and there which only served to make everything feel more real and immediate. And just the largeness of the sound and dynamic shifts in energy, sometimes providing a visceral rhythmic intensity that one would rarely expect from this genre. I cannot do it justice except to say that it was so impressive and inspiring.

I feel like attending this Siege has caused a permanent change in the way I see dungeon synth. Being able to now attach faces and personalities to this art in such an embodied way seems to give it much more weight in my mind. And I think maybe now when I try to appreciate new music, whether the artist performs live or not, I will be trying to imagine what it would be like for them to do a live show. There was a time when I insisted on dungeon synth being purely an isolated individualistic outsider genre, that the audience should barely be an afterthought.  Since then I've consciously understood for a long time that the reclusive obscurity is not a necessary aspect of dungeon synth for most people, but I have not been able to fully appreciate it personally except through that lens.  Now, after having such a good time at this festival, I'm starting to wonder if perhaps, even for myself, it has counterintuitively been about trying to connect with others all along? I still have a lot to process, but for the moment I'm feeling quite inspired to make music and maybe start blogging regularly again. Thanks to the artists and organizers for all their hard work creating such a memorable event.

I'm left with an image that keeps recurring in my mind, of the sky in the main field at night as I was leaving the festival grounds, a vast panoramic pitch-black border of trees surrounding the field and reaching high enough to majestically frame the sight of the stars, a dark portal of nature containing an endless cosmic expanse, pierced by the bright silvery moon hanging just above the treeline.