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Post by thekeeper on May 2, 2017 10:54:21 GMT -5
Thread to discuss an agreed upon listing of the essential or at least recommended dungeon synth releases. First and foremost, I don't entirely know how conceptually valid a 'recommended list' for dungeon synth could be considering dungeon synth is a personal experience that takes each person to somewhere within their own imagination (or the artist's, or whatever). There can be stark difference at times of what's popular 'scene-wide' versus what albums are important to you for your own reasons; some albums of high-obscurity or unpopularity are very important to some listeners and are more transportative than some albums that are quite popular in the scene. That said, I think if we do want to make a canon of essentials, we should figure out what we want this list to represent. Some of my thoughts on what should be represented: important albums in the founding of the classic DS sound (like Burzum, Mortiis, etc), albums of widespread inspiration (relative/subjective to a degree, I suppose), foundational/impactful albums of the internet-era scene. While everyone has their own preferences and personal tastes, I think it's safe to say that there are some albums that get a lot of deserved attention that we could consider 'essential'. So first, should we make this list at all, or for that matter treat it in any definitive way? I've made a few of my own charts in the past and tried my best to include albums of general importance and popularity in the scene, but I've probably put a bit of a twist of my own taste into them (I hold Era of Ice's Night of Swarog in higher regard than others might, for one example). Even if it ends up being just a representation of the forum's taste alone, I think it'd be fun anyway to discuss what albums we'd include and why. Second, how should we categorize what's included? In my charts I've made, I kind of divided them into eras with a few albums being foundational classics. Should we include separate sounds within this genre or just "dungeon synth" as a blanket without the nitpicking of things such as 'idyllic, depressive, barbarian' and others (if we do differentiate canonical 'micro-genres', I think Winter Synth is the most worthy of listing).
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Tyrannus
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Knowledge is Night
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Post by Tyrannus on May 2, 2017 15:30:18 GMT -5
I like the idea of organizing it as a flowchart of sorts...I kinda wanna make my own and post it here maybe
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Post by andrewwerdna on May 2, 2017 23:19:36 GMT -5
Last night right after I posted that recommended Mortiis list I decided to do a sort of PSA list for newcomers of mandatory classics everyone can more or less agree are historically essential: dungeonsynth.blogspot.com/2017/05/90s-canon.htmlI'm thinking when I get home later I'll remove the Vond albums. I think the sound is totally on point, but as crystallogic said in the other thread, the subject matter is not exactly kosher, at least relative to the other material listed. I'm also thinking I'll remove The Song of a Long Forgotten Ghost, just because I'm thinking ds demos in general did not have nearly the same influence as the full-length releases (at least until recent years).
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Post by andrewwerdna on May 2, 2017 23:51:01 GMT -5
What do you guys think of Cintecele Diavolui - The Devil's Songs? Is it as important as these other albums?
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Post by Carl Shoemaker on May 3, 2017 4:44:35 GMT -5
thanks for posting this! I will try to give these artists a listen. I think the black metal stuff with the screams and such is a bit much for me. Also, my DS listening has to be either in the car, or by myself at night, not for average "after dinner with the family" music.
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Post by curwenius on May 3, 2017 7:14:23 GMT -5
What do you guys think of Cintecele Diavolui - The Devil's Songs? Is it as important as these other albums? I think that Cintecele Diavolui should be in the list. It's a different flavour, but in my opinion it is undoubtedly DS. If you listen and compare Skepticism with Mistress of the Dead or Fungoid Stream, they are totally different, but all of them are funeral doom.
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Post by andrewwerdna on May 3, 2017 7:21:02 GMT -5
Well I think there's no question about whether it's dungeon synth, but with this list I'm wondering what are the albums that all fans of the genre should listen to? Is The Devil's Song an essential piece of the puzzle that no listener should be without?
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Post by lilac on May 3, 2017 8:55:10 GMT -5
Last night right after I posted that recommended Mortiis list I decided to do a sort of PSA list for newcomers of mandatory classics everyone can more or less agree are historically essential: dungeonsynth.blogspot.com/2017/05/90s-canon.htmlI'm thinking when I get home later I'll remove the Vond albums. I think the sound is totally on point, but as crystallogic said in the other thread, the subject matter is not exactly kosher, at least relative to the other material listed. I'm also thinking I'll remove The Song of a Long Forgotten Ghost, just because I'm thinking ds demos in general did not have nearly the same influence as the full-length releases (at least until recent years). So here is my question... What is more important, the theme of the DS recording, or the sound of it? Also, is it primarily "Selvmord" that people object to, or is it that it doesn't match thematically to DS? Genuine questions here, not trying to be argumentative. ;-)
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Tyrannus
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Knowledge is Night
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Post by Tyrannus on May 3, 2017 9:14:56 GMT -5
I guess that raises the larger question of whether something can be called dungeon synth if it doesn't have a dungeon aesthetic
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Post by curwenius on May 3, 2017 9:45:17 GMT -5
I understand now. Well, yes, I think The Devil's Song is an essential piece of the Dungeon Synth puzzle.
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Post by thekeeper on May 3, 2017 10:42:48 GMT -5
While Cintecele Diavolui is really good and quite definable as DS, I don't know if it's necessarily essential listening. I think many could not listen to it and not really miss out on anything all that important, let alone anything genre defining. I'm sure that album is an inspiration point, but I wouldn't include myself in a list of essential classics. If we want to differentiate between 'essential' and just 'recommended', I'd definitely put it in the latter over the former. andrewwerdna, I'm surprised that you'd leave out TSoaLFG from the list. Maybe I'm just speaking from personal taste, but I think that album is like the epitome of (classic) DS. The mistakes, the low fidelity, the repetition, the sincerity, it's all there. There was a poll in the FB group for favorite Mortiis album and that one got the least votes, I was really surprised. Maybe the later albums are more compositionally sound and better produced, but I think TSoaLFG is maybe the most dungeon out of all of them. I would swap out Stargate for Song, to be honest. Stargate is good too, and it was a great foray into some new elements, but at least for me Song is more essential. I suppose since the other albums are more generally liked, Song apparently being the least liked out for that matter, maybe that constitutes it's exclusion from the list? I suppose it's a bit crass to list an entire artist's discography as essential, though, even with era I Mortiis.
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Post by Darnziak on May 3, 2017 21:41:48 GMT -5
Also essential would be Burzum songs from the first albums, « Han som reiste » and « Tohmet », especially. But they are not full albums.
I'd certainly include the « Nightshade Forests » EP from Summoning, the guitar is so low in the mix in this one that it's almost pure dungeon synth. It's been my favorite for a long time. And maybe include « Lost Tales » too?
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Post by Niair de Nasqda on May 4, 2017 1:23:01 GMT -5
Also essential would be Burzum songs from the first albums, « Han som reiste » and « Tohmet », especially. But they are not full albums. I think those are more important than any of the "prison albums" tracks. But if we are talking about albums...
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Post by andrewwerdna on May 4, 2017 6:57:39 GMT -5
So here is my question... What is more important, the theme of the DS recording, or the sound of it? Also, is it primarily "Selvmord" that people object to, or is it that it doesn't match thematically to DS? Genuine questions here, not trying to be argumentative. ;-) The sound is more important. I don't think anyone necessarily objects to Selvmord, I'm pretty sure there is a consensus that it's a solid example of early DS. The album cover, album title, and song titles matter (a Pepe the Frog cover wouldn't fly, for example, no matter how good the music), but not as much as the sound (if it's not DS sound-wise, no cover or titles will make it so). But the sound is obviously more important if you look to Selvmord as an example, it's classic dungeon synth even though it seems thematically to be completely unrelated. However there is something to be said for the "complete picture." For an album to be essential to a genre I think the themes must also be in line with the consistent vision of that genre. No worries whether there's argumentative intentions or not. This is the kind of discussion I was hoping for. While Cintecele Diavolui is really good and quite definable as DS, I don't know if it's necessarily essential listening. I think many could not listen to it and not really miss out on anything all that important, let alone anything genre defining. I'm sure that album is an inspiration point, but I wouldn't include myself in a list of essential classics. If we want to differentiate between 'essential' and just 'recommended', I'd definitely put it in the latter over the former. I definitely understand this position, and am quite torn on whether to put it back on the list. Speaking from personal experience, when I was first getting into DS (in the mid 00's), this kind of music was nearly impossible to find apart from the projects listed here so far. The Mortiis side-projects however were relatively easy to find, since you could discover them just by researching Mortiis. So for me this album was rather critical in my understanding of this music as a genre, of many different faces, rather than an expression of one project. I imagine the experience might've been similar for Curwenius, who has been a fan/artist of this style for quite a long time. How did you first discover Cintecele Diavolui, Curwenius? I'm surprised that you'd leave out TSoaLFG from the list. Maybe I'm just speaking from personal taste, but I think that album is like the epitome of (classic) DS. The mistakes, the low fidelity, the repetition, the sincerity, it's all there. There was a poll in the FB group for favorite Mortiis album and that one got the least votes, I was really surprised. Maybe the later albums are more compositionally sound and better produced, but I think TSoaLFG is maybe the most dungeon out of all of them. I would swap out Stargate for Song, to be honest. It was in there initially, but I took it out when I took out Vond. It's an iconic classic, but I'm not sure that it stands well on its own. This is an album which I think says a lot more when considering what Mortiis would become, it's sort of an initial experiment in the new style (as a demo should be). It's not something that'd I'd be annoyed to discover a long-time dungeon synth fan hasn't listened to. It's a terrible album and I'd be opposed to any modern DS artist attempting to emulate its formula, even though I think it's something every dungeon synth fan should experience from beginning to end. Fuck it. I'm adding it to the list. It should be our sort of ordeal poison, right-of-passage, shamanic initiation album. You're not a genuine dungeoneer until you've listened to this thing from beginning to end. And considering that it was at this point that he basically conceived of the idea of full dungeon albums, I think this was a foundationally critical work. My concern was that by allowing this demo, I'd have to necessarily include the many other classic 90's demos. However I think I'm going to utilize a different criteria on this list than just "full-length." The criteria will be of ds artists who were not directly influenced by previous ds artists. "DS artists" in this sense will be artists who conceived of full-albums of the pure dungeon mood, which is why Burzum (and other BM) intros, interludes, and outros do not qualify, but which is also why Summoning does qualify because even though aesthetically the Summoning albums were thoroughly black metal, they were also thoroughly DS, more so than many pure DS albums. I'd certainly include the « Nightshade Forests » EP from Summoning, the guitar is so low in the mix in this one that it's almost pure dungeon synth. It's been my favorite for a long time. And maybe include « Lost Tales » too? These albums are absolutely iconic classics, however they really do feel like b-sides, lesser versions of the full-albums. I actually prefer the songs on these EPs to some of the tracks on the full-lengths, but if we're talking about historical importance, these EPs are not historical equals to the full-lengths, they live in their shadow. Perhaps Lost Tales is an exception because it broke away from Summoning's formula and didn't include black metal elements, but it's too short to really compare to these other albums. Stargate is good too, and it was a great foray into some new elements, but at least for me Song is more essential. I suppose since the other albums are more generally liked, Song apparently being the least liked out for that matter, maybe that constitutes it's exclusion from the list? I suppose it's a bit crass to list an entire artist's discography as essential, though, even with era I Mortiis. This is tricky. I understand the argument, it was such a departure from the original sound into high-production soundtrack territory, adding acoustic instruments and sung vocals. Even though these elements make it less "pure" aesthetically, I think the experience itself, the realm to which one escapes, is as thoroughly "dungeon" as possible. And the sound is still not far. It's not like Mortiis applied classical composition techniques in this album. It's still the same old self-taught weirdness, just with a much more concentrated effort. And likewise Wongraven - Fjelltronen applied these same elements. In removing The Stargate from the essentials list we'd necessarily have to remove Fjelltronen by the same criteria, and I'm not sure the picture is complete without Fjelltronen. Although I am quite tempted to remove both of them. The idea of this list is to be as short as possible. I'm thinking the goal should be 10-15. Which albums do we absolutely need for the full picture of the dungeon vision to emerge?
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Post by kaptaincarbon on May 4, 2017 8:22:00 GMT -5
So I started this project just cateloging all the new stuff I found interesting. www.reddit.com/r/DungeonSynth/comments/5pvnf9/dungeon_synth_index/We have been doing this kinda of thing for metal over at reddit for metal subgenres. (https://www.reddit.com/r/Metal/wiki/metalsubgenres) The trick is to not get too bogged down in recommended everything you like but rather give the basic barebones of a genre to allow a user to get a footing and then expand on there. You could probably do a primer of 90's stuff without much fuss and maybe the 00's before even trying to get into the 2010s. For any new person into the genre I find it to be useful that you not only give highlights but more in line with what they expect. I love experimentation in genres but I probably would lean more towards bands like Fairy Ring than Moaning Shadows. It is still interesting and could be something that could easy be house in a Vault when we eventually make one
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