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Post by curwenius on Apr 26, 2017 17:27:57 GMT -5
Well, it sounds totally different to the Valscharuhn that I know, but I think it sounds amazing. And it sounds to me almost as funeral doom, perhaps similar to Mistress of the Dead. Adding the proper vocals, it would undoubtly become funeral doom. Congratulations, and thanks for sharing it.
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Post by andrewwerdna on Apr 26, 2017 23:20:30 GMT -5
Thanks man. Interesting that you get funeral doom vibes from it since I have never really listened to much of that genre. I'll check out Mistress of the Dead.
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Post by gergely on Apr 27, 2017 12:34:25 GMT -5
Some funeral doom music have very similar atmosphere to dungeon synth, besides Mistress of the Dead I recommend all of you Shape Of Despair, especially this song:
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olofdigre
Knight
digre.bandcamp.com
Posts: 376
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Post by olofdigre on Jun 13, 2017 14:46:48 GMT -5
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Post by crypticdungeon on Jun 13, 2017 16:37:26 GMT -5
I actually really enjoyed Ykcowrebbaj a lot. Certainly an interesting and refreshing release.
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Post by curwenius on Jun 13, 2017 18:14:12 GMT -5
This review made me come back to Ykcowrebbaj once more, having past a while since the last time I listened to it. And I realized that my initial positive comment was too short. Ykcowrebbaj is unique, it's a real masterpiece.
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Post by andrewwerdna on Jun 14, 2017 17:15:25 GMT -5
Thanks for the review! I'm glad you liked the album.
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Post by shangrila on Nov 14, 2017 19:15:18 GMT -5
This is probably the best ds album in recent memory. Surprised no one's supported it. I'd probably buy a physical release.
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Post by andrewwerdna on Nov 15, 2017 2:59:45 GMT -5
Thanks! But it's completely free so it cannot be supported in that way.
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Post by Niair de Nasqda on Nov 18, 2017 16:08:46 GMT -5
Why do you prefer it to be free and not giving the option of supporting through Bandcamp? People cannot even add it to their Bandcamp collections. I was curious about this since I saw that album.
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Post by andrewwerdna on Nov 19, 2017 2:35:48 GMT -5
A couple reasons. Firstly, I think dungeon synth should be completely noncommercial. I don't want to impose that view on anyone, and I think even artists that put a price-tag on their music still are noncommercial by working in such an obscure niche genre. But I think asking money for music immediately makes that music seem more like a product with commercial expectations both in the minds of the artist and listener. I don't want there to be any expectations with Valschaurhn because I make it primarily for myself, which brings me to the second reason.
All the Valscharuhn albums, except Seven Wonders, have been incomplete to some extent. I've had many different album concepts but only make a few partially-realized tracks before moving onto something else, so these albums are just collections of those tracks. Since I'm not satisfied with these albums as complete works, I don't want to receive any money for them, even as name-your-price donations. So I made them all free, including Seven Wonders just because I've decided Valscharuhn will be my project for that stuff, and if I complete an album to my satisfaction I'll release it as a different project.
But all that said, name-your-price is just as good. I don't recommend anybody else do the strictly "free download" because as you said they can't be put into collections, and also it won't show up under "new releases" for the genre tag, so aside from self-promotion nobody will be able to find it. But TLDR I'm stupid and wanted to "take a stand."
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Post by andrewwerdna on Mar 19, 2020 23:15:11 GMT -5
Hey guys, the pre-order/digital download is up for the cd and cassette release of Seven Wonders of the Ancient World: uhpeternal.bandcamp.com/album/valscharuhn-seven-wonder-of-the-ancient-worldThere are some things I'd like to say about this album, and this release specifically. This album is really important to me. I had tinkered with dungeon music for several years prior to this, basically just using my computer keyboard and plugging in the midi notes to my DAW. Then one day, during my regular searches of "Mortiis" on ebay, I discovered that his original JV-30 synth was for sale, the one he used almost entirely for his Era 1 material. I strongly considered purchasing that, and I kind of wish I did because it wasn't too crazily priced, maybe $500 or so. I wonder who has it now? Anyways, it was too expensive for me at the time, but I then knew what synth he used, so I saved some money and the next time I saw a JV-30 show up on ebay I immediately snatched it up. Well I screwed around with it for a bit and while I had been struggling to make dungeon music up until this point, suddenly once I had this synth everything started falling into place and the melodies just seemed to flow out very naturally. Something about the quality, but also simplicity and limited number of sounds was very inspiring. I wouldn't recommend a JV-30 for anyone today though, because I've discovered since then that it is really more just the "General MIDI" patch frameworks that have this quality of being really intuitive for composing, and one can experiment with something nearly identical to the JV-30 right now via the Roland Sound Canvas VA VST on Roland Cloud, specifically the "SC-55" on there. I wouldn't recommend the JV-30 as well because the sounds are just too close to Mortiis. I realized this immediately at the time, which is one of the reasons I decided to go for the theme of the album that I did rather than the traditional fantasy stuff. Also, if anyone's interested, the idea of Seven Wonders, or at least my interest in that topic would've definitely been initially sparked by playing Civ2-4. Building those wonders was so satisfying and evoked some very powerful and mysterious imaginings. So I made the album, and I look back on that time fondly. I remember also around the same time is when I was trying to write a novel (made it about halfway through, but have never been able to read it, far too cringey haha), and while writing that I was really trying to exclusively listen to "dark dungeon music," though only knew of maybe ten or so artists despite much searching. But this time would've been when I was most and invested and enthusiastic with DS, and with this synth I felt I could finally make something within the same genre, and I really wanted to be traditional as possible, because there was so little of this stuff (that I was aware of), I just wanted there to be more. Being my flag-in-the-sand, I really spent a lot of time and effort to get it just right, haven't really put in that same level of effort into anything I've made since, at least not with composition. Although I was pretty musically ignorant at the time (still am), think every track is in the same key haha, but that's also pretty traditional I suppose. Upon releasing the album I really didn't know where to promote it. Bandcamp was just gaining traction at this point, which I was very stoked about because before this I was releasing albums via Megaupload and Mediafire and whatnot. I remember I posted it to a few forums, and one black metal download blog that was kind enough to post it, and just friends and stuff. People seemed to think it was interesting, but I don't know if anybody replied or commented on it that seemed to know of this tradition that I was making such an effort to be a part of. It was more like people thinking I was trying to make something like a video game or film soundtrack and just missed the mark through inexperience. I tried explaining what it was about genre-wise, but nobody seemed to get it at all. So that was one of the reasons I started the blog, so I could take my time and explain it in-depth once and just have a single tag to refer to it, and also just to kind of start a conversation and get the ball rolling because it seemed like the genre was not only dead but also forgotten. The rest is history. But the point being, if not for Seven Wonders I don't know if I would've ever started the blog, so "dungeon synth" might've been called something else years later when somebody else started talking about it, or it might still be called "dark ambient" and still be almost entirely unknown... So it has historical value even if the music is not necessarily the highest tier, which is partially why I decided to accept the offer for it to be released physically, because very few people seem to know about it or its place in the timeline. I believe it would've been the first album tagged "dungeon synth" on bandcamp, unless I waited to use my own goddamn tag for some reason which is not unlike me. But there are some other reasons to get this new release than just the physicality! When asked for the "master," I dug through my files and noticed something strange, the bit rate on several of the WAVs were lower than the standard 1411kbps. So I dug up the old project files, mixed down, and compared them and sure enough I could clearly see a loss in data in the old one. So in my ignorance back then I had fucked something up and severely reduced the quality of some tracks for no reason. But also in this process I realized I used some particularly nasty compression on some tracks, and also normalized every track to peak 0db. That means some tracks were much louder than others. This time I normalized all tracks to the same RMS, and used NO compression in this mastering stage. So technically this is a remaster, or maybe an "unmaster." I think it sounds much better, and I'm happy to say I no longer hate Statue of Zeus. I was really tempted to change some stuff in the mix, and was even tempted to re-record some particularly sloppy bits, but I resisted the urge. The mix is untouched. So what you're hearing is the pure mix from 2010 (released 01/01/11). I'm going to leave the audio on the original bandcamp page the same for now, might update it sometime later, might not. Either way it will remain free on there, and for now if you want the fixed audio you'll have to buy the new release from Uralte Herrschaft. Another cool change is that I bought a super high-resolution version of that artwork from a stock image site and spent a good deal of time trying to get the filter just right to be nearly identical to the original cover. Check out the difference: Original vs. NewSorry for this long, rambly, shameless self-promotion. I don't think this album deserves a bunch of attention or anything, I just don't want it to be entirely forgotten, at least for the sake of the interesting history behind it.
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Post by crystallogic13 on Mar 20, 2020 1:40:32 GMT -5
Andrew endless thanx for the insight and story of a great relic gem of DS and the time you took for the above nice post. Great to learn more about the importance of 7 Wonders (I personally like it a LOT and you are a harsh judge of your own work mate - 5/7 songs are in my master Campaign list and I also love its great unique thematic) but also of how you got the journey from the Mortiis keyboard investigation to create this album and then eventually the blog and coin the term Dungeon Synth as we all know it.. I feel like above is a snip of DS history that sometime will be in its Chronicles Thanx also for the mini review about the journey of the changes in 7 Wonders, I will check it side by side asap and enjoy the fresh version hopefully soon !! Regards Andrew and thanx for all the nice insight!! Edit : Andrew, I noticed a) instead of Valscharuhn it says "Various Artists" in the BC page and also b) There's a missing "s" at the end of "... Wonder s... " in all the description, just thought I give a heads up!! Cheers
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Post by andrewwerdna on Mar 20, 2020 12:46:15 GMT -5
Andrew endless thanx for the insight and story of a great relic gem of DS and the time you took for the above nice post. Great to learn more about the importance of 7 Wonders (I personally like it a LOT and you are a harsh judge of your own work mate - 5/7 songs are in my master Campaign list and I also love its great unique thematic) but also of how you got the journey from the Mortiis keyboard investigation to create this album and then eventually the blog and coin the term Dungeon Synth as we all know it.. I feel like above is a snip of DS history that sometime will be in its Chronicles Thanx also for the mini review about the journey of the changes in 7 Wonders, I will check it side by side asap and enjoy the fresh version hopefully soon !! Regards Andrew and thanx for all the nice insight!! Edit : Andrew, I noticed a) instead of Valscharuhn it says "Various Artists" in the BC page and also b) There's a missing "s" at the end of "... Wonder s... " in all the description, just thought I give a heads up!! Cheers Thanks for taking the time to read it, and your kind words about the music. Glad you found the write-up interesting and not too self-aggrandizing. And thanks for letting me know about the typos, passed the word along.
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Post by thekeeper on Mar 20, 2020 18:39:36 GMT -5
Very happy this has gotten a physical release after all these years. I hope newcomers who don't recall Valscharuhn pick the album up because this and Journeys Adrift are two timeless classics from the early revival years. I like the thing that Murg has going for the label now, cementing these classics in CD or tape. Isn't it funny that we're almost at point of now digging things up from like 10 years ago, when 10 years ago we were digging things up that were forgotten before that? It's all a cycle I suppose. Do you have artist copies coming to you? I'm essentially broke at the moment, otherwise I'd pick this up without hesitation. But anyway, love that this is out.
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