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Post by GloriousUsurper on Jun 21, 2017 17:07:32 GMT -5
I think we all can agree that none of these artists actually threaten the integrity of the genre. While they may not be our favorite, their existence doesn't diminish how good our favorite DS albums are. I've bumped into a lot of these but they really just leave my mind pretty quickly You are absolutely correct. Garbage music in no way diminishes a scene. That concern comes up in a lot of groups in regards to various genres, as if they just discovered terrible music for the first time. Every genre is going to produce material that people dislike, and there will always be plenty of undeniably bad material out there as well. That is simply how it goes. That said, most of the noise/dungeon synth is pretty terrible. You can tell that they are people who don't actually listen to noise because noise, power electronics, etc, despite being very noisy, are actually skillfully crafted in their respective scenes by various artists and seldom rely and just one droning noise that has been compressed to oblivion.
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Tyrannus
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Post by Tyrannus on Jun 21, 2017 17:35:08 GMT -5
I think we all can agree that none of these artists actually threaten the integrity of the genre. While they may not be our favorite, their existence doesn't diminish how good our favorite DS albums are. I've bumped into a lot of these but they really just leave my mind pretty quickly You are absolutely correct. Garbage music in no way diminishes a scene. That concern comes up in a lot of groups in regards to various genres, as if they just discovered terrible music for the first time. Every genre is going to produce material that people dislike, and there will always be plenty of undeniably bad material out there as well. That is simply how it goes.Β That said, most of the noise/dungeon synth is pretty terrible. You can tell that they are people who don't actually listen to noise because noise, power electronics, etc, despite being very noisy, are actually skillfully crafted in their respective scenes by various artists and seldom rely and just one droning noise that has been compressed to oblivion. well I'd say noise and dungeon noise seek to achieve different goals largely, so I at least go about noise making differently when I'm fusing it with dungeon synth. I don't think I'm a particularly great practioner of noise but I do listen to it and care about it. I've spent time and money putting together a mixer/pedal rig that I enjoy, so I do take pride in my work. I'm most proud of my HNW material myself. I know ranseur loves noise but I can't speak for everybody. I've never really tried to promote my dungeon noise in noise circles because I feel they're fairly different in many ways
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Post by nebulosa on Jun 21, 2017 17:41:09 GMT -5
I agree that conflict is a normal thing, a product of resistance to experimentation. I too am confident that with time, this whole thing with mellow out at least. Hopefully that will also allow an open dialogue to occur as well.
I wouldn't necessarily say dungeon synth has remained the same, as we are seeing quite a bit of experimentation and an increase in new artists in the past couple years.
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Post by GloriousUsurper on Jun 21, 2017 17:46:31 GMT -5
That is awesome! There are some certainly some DS artists who utilize noise well, but noise just happens to be a go to for quite a few people because they hink is it literally just noise and is thusly a no-brainer to make. You find the exact same thing in martial industrial, occasionally neofolk, and sometimes even black metal. Poorly crafted noise music is just an especially unfortunate thing. I have some noise material myself, but the only track of noise that I actually released was essentially a weird experiment in hiding images in the music itself that can be viewed with a spectrogram. From my war themed martial industrial project Soldat: I am not a huge fan of noise by any means, but it is an art form that I respect.
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Post by GloriousUsurper on Jun 21, 2017 17:52:58 GMT -5
I agree that conflict is a normal thing, a product of resistance to experimentation. I too am confident that with time, this whole thing with mellow out at least. Hopefully that will also allow an open dialogue to occur as well. I wouldn't necessarily say dungeon synth has remained the same, as we are seeing quite a bit of experimentation and an increase in new artists in the past couple years. True enough. There will always be purists that snub their nose at anything that goes outside the box, or their idea of how things should be anyways. That mindset tends to come with people who have been in a scene for either a very long time, or over-zealous young folk. Most people grow out of it. I imagine there will be less infighting once certain people grasp the fact that no amount of pissiness will ever make things go their way. These people are usually trying to romanticize an era they are viewing through rose-tinted glasses (or weren't around for to begin with) or desperately want to shape a scene in a way they find most palatable for themselves, despite the natural evolution that any music scene will go through.
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Tyrannus
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Post by Tyrannus on Jun 21, 2017 17:54:50 GMT -5
That is awesome! There are some certainly some DS artists who utilize noise well, but noise just happens to be a go to for quite a few people because they hink is it literally just noise and is thusly a no-brainer to make. You find the exact same thing in martial industrial, occasionally neofolk, and sometimes even black metal. Poorly crafted noise music is just an especially unfortunate thing. I have some noise material myself, but the only track of noise that I actually released was essentially a weird experiment in hiding images in the music itself that can be viewed with a spectrogram. From my war themed martial industrial project Soldat:Β View AttachmentI am not a huge fan of noise by any means, but it is an art form that I respect. I definitely get that. Noise is highly stigmatized and can attract lazy people so I guess it's only logical that dungeon noise would suffer in that way too. I'm optimistic that insincerity will easily recognized and subsequently ignored
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Post by Tyrannus on Jun 21, 2017 22:02:30 GMT -5
I agree that conflict is a normal thing, a product of resistance to experimentation. I too am confident that with time, this whole thing with mellow out at least. Hopefully that will also allow an open dialogue to occur as well. I wouldn't necessarily say dungeon synth has remained the same, as we are seeing quite a bit of experimentation and an increase in new artists in the past couple years. True enough. There will always be purists that snub their nose at anything that goes outside the box, or their idea of how things should be anyways. That mindset tends to come with people who have been in a scene for either a very long time, or over-zealous young folk. Most people grow out of it. I imagine there will be less infighting once certain people grasp the fact that no amount of pissiness will ever make things go their way. These people are usually trying to romanticize an era they are viewing through rose-tinted glasses (or weren't around for to begin with) or desperately want to shape a scene in a way they find most palatable for themselves, despite the natural evolution that any music scene will go through. Yeah that camp seems to be divided between some veterans who I respect and some fairly knuckle-headed newcomers who I can't really abide. I'm wondering how long they'll stick around before they move on to the next thing. They seem like the type who'd have little motivation to carry on without the extremely minor celebrity status in the DS scene they've garnered. I'm very eager to see where we all are in like a year's time
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Post by andrewwerdna on Jun 23, 2017 18:49:31 GMT -5
Alright, before this thread goes quiet, let's get back to the "Werdna Trve Test" for a moment (has a good ring to it, haha). It seems we mostly seem eye-to-eye on all the points except "stay close to the roots." Maybe you could say that it's not really fair to say someone is a fan of DS itself if they only like specific artists or specific sounds, I guess that's technically true. But I don't think that level of semantics matters that much. Like "I'm a black metal fan", "oh yeah? You like Darkthrone, Burzum, Mayhem, Ulver, Venom, and Bathory?", "not really, I guess I'm more into I'm in a Coffin, I Shalt Become, Hypothermia, Alcest, Happy Days, Amesouers, Les Discrets, Gris, stuff like that", "so you're not a black metal fan then, you just like DSBM and some blackgaze", "oh, yeah I guess so". Technically true, but is it that necessary to differentiate, at least at this point? Yes. I think it's perfectly fine if someone were to make an album and call it DS having only listened to and appreciated newer, more non-traditional stuff, but I don't think that is being "true." To be true to a genre sticking the roots is the most essential point I think, or else you'll need to specify (implicitly or explicitly) that it's some other branch within that genre to which you're being true to. So perhaps one can be true to "dungeon noise" and consider Ranseur to be an essential root that all those engaged with the subsubgenre must contextualize, and then Mortiis might not be as relevant. Similarly I imagine BM bands in the early 90's considered those who were making BM without being fans of the first wave (Bathory, Celtic Frost, Venom, etc.) to be untrue posers, and perhaps at the time that was the case because without those traditional roots, even though the second wave was so drastically different, the context was lost. But nowadays I think those second wave BM roots have solidified and one can easily make "true BM" without being a fan of the first wave. But I don't think one can make "true BM" having only listened to post-2000 material. Certainly one could make some very interesting BM with such influences, but it wouldn't be true, because being true means being true to a tradition, and in music that means true to the genre's roots, the foundational works that defined the sound. All that said, keep in mind I'm not advocating being "true," better to be original (though I don't think the two necessarily exclude each other). But the idea of playing in a genre implies following a musical tradition to some extent, and being "true" at its simplest is just following that tradition more closely. To be "true" one must have something to be true to.
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Post by thekeeper on Jun 23, 2017 19:23:08 GMT -5
andrewwerdna , I think I mostly agree with all of that, save for some points. I think we've come upon a more nuanced and maybe firmer definition for 'true', one that signifies an historical appreciation of the genre (whether not its liked? what do you think?); I'm hesitant to say the 'the wholeness of the genre' in respect to history, because that doesn't entirely apply to many traditionalist-minded DS or BM fans (whatever kind of fan someone is). It's interesting that it works on different levels. I suppose you could apply the 'historical foundation trveness' criteria to multiple evolutionary phases or eras of genres. As you said, some artists now, or in the past couple years, are laying the groundwork for the foundational releases of Dungeon Noise, possibly creating the 'trveness' criteria for that subset. I think we could even do this for early BC era stuff (Lord Lovidicus, Erang, Abandoned Places), trve criteria of that era. This might help our 'essential listening' thread along. But for all intents and purposes, I think we can all easily agree the definition of trveness in DS now stems from Mortiis, Burzum, and Wongraven, even if we don't care that much to be 'trve' ourselves. This seems odd to me, because how can someone listening judge if a band is 'true' or not? If someone can make a true BM album without being a 1st wave fans, why can't they make a true BM album if they haven't listened to 1st wave? Are the influences required, or can someone simply be aware of the foundations and not enjoy them? What if someone heard 1st wave, wasn't into it at all, but really liked 2nd wave and made an album, would this album not be a trve one? It's almost like a string of influences, 'trveness' requiring an awareness of the influences of those down the line who helped define a genre (new artist inspired by Endlichkeit who was inspired by Velvet Cacoon, who was inspired by Burzum, who was inspired by 1st wave; trveness for the first artist seems to require and understanding of the lineage).
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Post by andrewwerdna on Jun 23, 2017 20:21:50 GMT -5
andrewwerdna , I think I mostly agree with all of that, save for some points. I think we've come upon a more nuanced and maybe firmer definition for 'true', one that signifies an historical appreciation of the genre (whether not its liked? what do you think?); I'm hesitant to say the 'the wholeness of the genre' in respect to history, because that doesn't entirely apply to many traditionalist-minded DS or BM fans (whatever kind of fan someone is). It's interesting that it works on different levels. I suppose you could apply the 'historical foundation trveness' criteria to multiple evolutionary phases or eras of genres. As you said, some artists now, or in the past couple years, are laying the groundwork for the foundational releases of Dungeon Noise, possibly creating the 'trveness' criteria for that subset. I think we could even do this for early BC era stuff (Lord Lovidicus, Erang, Abandoned Places), trve criteria of that era. This might help our 'essential listening' thread along. But for all intents and purposes, I think we can all easily agree the definition of trveness in DS now stems from Mortiis, Burzum, and Wongraven, even if we don't care that much to be 'trve' ourselves. If someone just has a historical appreciation for the roots of the genre, but doesn't actually like them or is influenced by them I still wouldn't consider that to be "true." Maybe it could be true to a different branch within that genre, but I wouldn't consider it to be true to the genre as a whole. If anything it would be the opposite because it would imply that any music made by such a person would be like a contradictory reaction to the established tradition, like intentionally breaking the rules. This is often a good and healthy thing, like I'd say second wave black metal was partially a repudiation of traditional death metal, and at the time black metal wasn't fully established so it could've easily been thought of as "untrue death metal," even though they were being quite true to certain roots, and not just a historical recognition of those roots. I'm assuming you meant to say "... why can't they make a true BM album if the haven't listened to the 2nd wave?" Because I think first wave and second wave are fundamentally different genres for the purposes of this conversation, like the difference between punk and post-punk, but this is only the case after time has passed. In the early 90's the first wave was the foundation of black metal, but things have changed and now the second wave is the foundation, foundation as in the traditional influence. I don't think one could've made "true" BM in the early nineties if they only listened to BM that was being released at the time, because they weren't working within the established tradition, since the new tradition was still in the process of formation. However such an album which would've been "untrue" at the time, the kinds of artists the "inner circle" publicly looked down upon, after time has passed is now "true" in this new context where the second wave is considered the traditional foundation of black metal as a whole. In the same sense, I don't think one could've made "true" DS in the early 90's if they did not come from an BM influence, however now I think DS has been established as an independent tradition and one can produce it and be "true" while having no real appreciation for black metal. I think the traditional foundations of a genre are a shifting thing, and so perhaps an artist making DS right now with no influence from the 90's might be "untrue" in the present context, but "true" ten years from now.
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Post by nebulosa on Jun 24, 2017 18:07:04 GMT -5
Reading the last couple of posts, I would ask just how important is it to be "trve"? Pushing a genre's boundaries is what enables it to grow and take on different forms of greatness. There are certainly merits to more traditional sounding and trve dungeon synth being made today, but without experimentation there would be stagnation.
As another question, how far would "sticking to the roots," be accepted as a metric for trve-ness? For example, if a dungeon synth album with high fidelity that used complex song structures was released, but it still created a dark and foreboding atmosphere tinged with nostalgia, would it be considered trve? It might have the same feeling or evoke similar images as the founding artists of dungeon synth, but goes about it in a far different way.
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Post by andrewwerdna on Jun 24, 2017 19:13:57 GMT -5
For me personally, these days, being "true" is not important at all. I just have a certain idea of what "true" in a dungeon synth context should look like, and since being true is obviously important to some people in the community I thought it'd be interesting to discuss.
For the second question, sure. I didn't say "stick to the roots" in the sense that artists should only duplicate the exact formula from the 90's, but rather they should embrace the same sort of vision. And in any case not all the foundational 90's stuff was lofi and simplistic, like Wongraven for instance.
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Post by nebulosa on Jun 24, 2017 20:32:34 GMT -5
I agree, I think this is a very interesting topic! Personally I too agree that the atmosphere and imagery is what makes something "true," and that being "true" is not all that important. I would love to hear some opposing viewpoints though, both regarding the importance of and what makes "true" dungeon synth.
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Post by GloriousUsurper on Jun 26, 2017 17:03:47 GMT -5
Reading the last couple of posts, I would ask just how important is it to be "trve"? Pushing a genre's boundaries is what enables it to grow and take on different forms of greatness. There are certainly merits to more traditional sounding and trve dungeon synth being made today, but without experimentation there would be stagnation. As another question, how far would "sticking to the roots," be accepted as a metric for trve-ness? For example, if a dungeon synth album with high fidelity that used complex song structures was released, but it still created a dark and foreboding atmosphere tinged with nostalgia, would it be considered trve? It might have the same feeling or evoke similar images as the founding artists of dungeon synth, but goes about it in a far different way. Your first point: For me I see little inherit value in being "true". Generally speaking, when artists harp on about being "true" they end up aping their idols a little hard, which is completely normal, but how many times do we need to hear the same album by countless artists just because they all have a fetish for the same 2 or 3 bands? The endless Burzum clones are a good example of a scene being too focused on being "true". Now the good part is when a band apes the old ways, but legitimately bring their own flavor to the concoction, such as the White Death (black metal) album. Nothing new, but very, very black metal, and absolutely stunning all the same. Second point: ah, that is a tough one. Good example though. The quality of production is probably the biggest factor for most people from what I have seen. A lot of fans want that old grimy sound which we all love, but a well composed piece can be just as moving with clear production. I suppose my first response somewhat applies to this as well.
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Post by thekeeper on Jun 27, 2017 9:43:22 GMT -5
Your first point: For me I see little inherit value in being "true". Generally speaking, when artists harp on about being "true" they end up aping their idols a little hard, which is completely normal, but how many times do we need to hear the same album by countless artists just because they all have a fetish for the same 2 or 3 bands? The endless Burzum clones are a good example of a scene being too focused on being "true". Now the good part is when a band apes the old ways, but legitimately bring their own flavor to the concoction, such as the White Death (black metal) album. Nothing new, but very, very black metal, and absolutely stunning all the same. The interesting thing about Burzum copies is that sometimes it's intentional and I've even read some opinions where listeners enjoy that kind of music recycling in black metal. On one hand, I get it. A lot of black metal certainly does sound pretty similar (most often Burzum or Darkthrone clones), but depending on the intention of the band, they may not want to actually create something new per se, but rather cycle a spirit of negation inherent in the black metal era they're echoing. Like if Darkthrone's famous early trilogy was conjured on the facet of being lo-fi monotonous and sonically monochromatic, intentionally a driving tremolo picked treble wall with little percussive variation, people are going to mimic that intention if it makes sense to them. Same thing with a lot of HNW ("no ideas" - Vomir). So what some bigger artists do out of concept makes sense to see mirrored years after. On the other hand, you could argue that the conditions and setting are different, where it's just boring and uninteresting to be a Burzum or Darkthrone copy now, even if the conceptual side of a band is intentionally/purposefully recycled. I'm sure a lot of BM bands may not like to be categorized as having a kind of artistic negation concept attached to them, but that's the way I see it. Personally, I like a pretty big variety of BM, surely including a number of Burzum/Darkthrone-esque artists (I Shalt Become's first album is top-tier), but I agree about traditional artists having something these days that makes their music their own. I think the negation and intentional cycling thing doesn't exactly apply to DS, though, even considering its relation to BM. A Burzum copy may be fine in BM, but the equivalent in DS, a Mortiis copy, is pretty boring in DS if they don't do something to make their own music theirs.
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