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Post by andrewwerdna on Jan 29, 2018 8:34:10 GMT -5
my only grip with this on any level is that WE the music listeners might miss out on great DS music if it's not labeled as such, and would rely on the community at large to bring it to our attention. This in relation to Bandcamp searches. If being more obscure is the intention I definitely support that, even if that means I might never discover the artist or album in question. That's a strange position to take, but I think in the case of dungeon synth it's reasonable since part of its charm is how unlikely it all seems. I'm 100% on this. If an artist wants to record a masterpiece to a single cassette and then bury it in a time capsule and tell nobody I support that too.
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Tyrannus
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Post by Tyrannus on Jan 29, 2018 9:31:08 GMT -5
my only grip with this on any level is that WE the music listeners might miss out on great DS music if it's not labeled as such, and would rely on the community at large to bring it to our attention. This in relation to Bandcamp searches. If being more obscure is the intention I definitely support that, even if that means I might never discover the artist or album in question. That's a strange position to take, but I think in the case of dungeon synth it's reasonable since part of its charm is how unlikely it all seems. I'm 100% on this. If an artist wants to record a masterpiece to a single cassette and then bury it in a time capsule and tell nobody I support that too. If a tape is made in the dungeon and no one is around to hear it, is it true dungeon synth? Jokes aside I wonder if trying to be as obscure as you can be is a worthwhile endeavor. It feels a bit false but I guess it depends on how you do it.
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Post by nahadoth on Jan 29, 2018 10:05:39 GMT -5
In thinking about this a lot, my very enlightened conclusion is that the proof will be in whether or not the music changes, or if it changes at all. I find it interesting that there has been a recent trend towards making physical releases at least less obscure, less rare. Part of this is trying to stick it to discogs flippers, and I totally get that motivation, but it also seems like there are many artists who are interested in reaching as many people as want to hear the music, rather than just hoping people discover it accidentally. So if obscurity truly is the cause, it will be interesting to see if the people casting off the DS association has any impact on that, especially since many of those projects are reasonably well established in the scene.
But yeah, I would be interested to see if this change in "branding" has any impact on the music, whether it makes the music more creative, or more homogenized.
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Post by thekeeper on Jan 29, 2018 11:29:24 GMT -5
Exactly. This is what blows my mind about the whole thing to the point where I just cannot even fathom what all the fuss could be about. In a genre which stemmed from LARPers and people who unironically wore prosthetic troll noses, it seems beyond silly to be embarrassed by it now, when so much good music is being made. It doesn't make any sense to me. It's supposed to be deeply personal and subjective but these historical revisionists act like the genre is about something else. No one should feel ashamed of their or anyone else's fantastical vision. I've always felt a certain portion of the community views DS as something that "needs legitimizing" to other artists and the outside world. These people are resentful of the description of DS as "black metal guys making fantasy keyboard music" or any accusation of "cheesiness" or "nerdiness" or anything like that. These are people who don't really seem to understand what the genre is or what its origins are. It was never about showing off or wowing the outside world, but creating your own introspective realm. So now these same people are just abandoning the term altogether since they clearly don't stand for the same things. I don't think everyone is on the same bandwagon of 'DS needs legitimatizing', as least not entirely. Since the genre has quite a bit of DIY experimentation, smaller EPs posted to BC to see if artists like going about making DS, and everything is pretty much on an equal playing field of centralization on Bandcamp, so juxtaposing like 'X big name release that took one year to make including post-production and x, y, z' alongside 'hey I made these two tracks today on a goodwill keyboard, I like Tolkien' might be jarring and the former might feel the they are being interpreted as less serious because it's all grouped together as far as finding DS goes (everyone is exposed to all types of DS). I don't think it's wrong to want to be taken seriously, but I also don't think it's that big of a deal and none of the 'big name' artists are taken less seriously because "Warg of Secret Silence" made a free two song demo in FL Studio yesterday. DS will never be broadly accepted unless maybe it merges a lot with VGM, which some people apparently hate, or pure soundtrack music. Like Justin said, people used to make so much fun of these synth tapes from BM artists. No one wanted them and you could get stuff on Discogs for like $3 that now goes for $30. I think Canrith (or someone) said he found Mournlord in a cheap bargain bin at a record store. So I get why some may want to stop be associated with DS, and I bear no ill will towards these artists and I enjoy their music, but I don't think they can achieve what they're trying to achieve; dropping the tag and leaving some facebook groups doesn't change much. Not saying you're DS might sound like it's in fact 'more DS', allowing you to 'be DS' without explicitly saying so, but it's far too late. That idea has been brought up a few times and it's one that's really interesting, about if DS can only be retroactive and if uncovering lost albums is in itself a part of the DS listening experience. Finding DS no one (in the contemporary scene) has heard of is really satisfying, not because it's feels 'elite' or whatever, but because it's exciting to find something with that kind of fantastical ideal that's been lost and now recovered. If I really wanted, I could share none of it on the Dungeon Excavation blog, but what's the point in that. So in that sense, if they abandon the tag for this reason of having DS applied to them 'after the fact', then it's almost genius, except literally everyone calls them DS, they're already known as DS, so its almost a feigned ignorance to the rest of its existence, attempting an implication of prototype without knowledge of the established idea, perhaps a philosophical purity of intention in that respect. But in reality, they're going to be called DS by (nearly?) everybody since they are quite literally making Dungeon Synth. This may have worked if they had no music out beforehand, but it's far too late for that now, especially considering their popularity. I still think it's a distinct genre that can be discerned from genres that are similar like neoclassical darkwave. It's kind of both a genre and an idea, isn't it? There are some artists who are arguably considered DS due to participation in the scene, being on X label or whatever, and there are artists who just sound like 'Dungeon Synth' and need not even participate in the scene at large. So I agree that shedding the tag is inconsequential, just kind of funny and obviously coming from a place of desired separation rather than experimentation. I'm very eager to hear the next release from anyone who drops the tag in hope that I'm proven wrong. While we talk about there being like 3 waves of DS I feel as though there are two main “eras” of the genre. The past was typified by being the “descriptive” era in which the term Dungeon Synth was only retroactively applied to the music, and the modern era is “prescriptive” in which our understanding of the genre informs how we make our music. I think the folks abandoning the tag don’t want to seem as though they’re aspiring to make music of a genre which they feel has developed a bad reputation. They want to act as though they have a music vision totally uninformed/untouched/untainted by “undesirable” encroachments into the style of Dungeon Synth. The problem is that it’s kind of too late to just pretend you’re not associated with the genre, despite what you may say. You can’t pretend you’re back in the “descriptive” era. I mean fine I guess you can pretend that, I mean I feel like it’s a bit delusional, but really these guys are a part of the modern era, like it or not Absolutely. I don't have any strong feelings on this one way or the other. It is interesting though that (as far as I know) none of these people were active before the term caught on and it started getting popular, so it would seem they're trend-hopping as much as anyone else, even if they try to deny it by calling it something else. I'm not bothered by it though, it's just a term, as long dark dungeon music is recognized for what it is as being its own thing it doesn't matter to me what it's called. The one alternate terminology I wholeheartedly approve of though is Soporific Sorcery's "torture chamber music," he was calling it that before the dungeon synth term came along and I think it's cool that he sticks by it. Precisely what I thought. Laments about people hopping on the DS train to make some fast demos and then move on are old news, and a lot of these who were probably deemed posers have stuck around. Creating DS after it's established and then calling the same music something else after you decide you don't like the scene and dread the future of DS all seems really weird. I ultimately don't mind since nothing will change from this, but I like discussing it. I'm sure some might ask, "if you don't care, then why talk about it so much?", to which I would say that's a good question. Semantics are interesting to me. I fully support 'torture chamber music' and love Soporific Sorcery. I'm curious how familiar he is with the rest of the genre. 'Death Music', on the other hand, in deliberate avoidance of DS as it's established while being absolutely DS is quite pointless, and it's not even tongue-in-cheek so it winds up just sounding goofy. If being more obscure is the intention I definitely support that, even if that means I might never discover the artist or album in question. That's a strange position to take, but I think in the case of dungeon synth it's reasonable since part of its charm is how unlikely it all seems. I'm 100% on this. If an artist wants to record a masterpiece to a single cassette and then bury it in a time capsule and tell nobody I support that too. If a tape is made in the dungeon and no one is around to hear it, is it true dungeon synth? Jokes aside I wonder if trying to be as obscure as you can be is a worthwhile endeavor. It feels a bit false but I guess it depends on how you do it. I understand the desire to be obscure in DS since obscurity was its origin, and it's one of the few things where it's not ultra cheesy to engage in that kind of deliberate obfuscation of discovery (or maybe it is still cheesy, I don't mind either way). Uploading your DS music to BC, tagging it 'medieval dark ambient', charging like $5 to download, and producing 100 $9 pro-tapes isn't being obscure (or elite). Uploading your DS music to BC, tagging it just as 'ambient', setting it as free to download, and requiring an email asking for a $3 DIY tape is 100x more obscure. I think they're less concerned about obscurity than they are about being taken seriously, otherwise they'd've taken different avenues. ~Perhaps the most DS thing is not recording your music at all~
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Post by crystallogic13 on Jan 29, 2018 11:41:44 GMT -5
Andrewwerdna the problem is not the tag itself only but mostly the distancing from everyone in the community in such a way. I mean, come on, on Thangorodrim's akalabeth the 2 comments have "dungeon synth" in there both (the second one in its.. name actually).. Maybe he should erase those too ? And again, what exactly was THEIR problem ? Tag , community? No I find it disgraceful really to the whole scene such attitude now that I'm thinking of it..
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Post by thekeeper on Jan 29, 2018 11:42:44 GMT -5
"Punks realize calling yourself punk might be less punk than just being punk. No one but the punks care much anyway and continue to call the punks 'punks'."
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Tyrannus
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Post by Tyrannus on Jan 29, 2018 11:46:19 GMT -5
After a bit more time and information I’m changing my interpretation of the leaving of the genre/community. Having talked to some folks I now see this move to ditch the tag as an act of deference. Basically a “we disagree and we probably always will, but because the term seems to apply more to what you’re doing than what we’re doing then you can have the name, we’ll find something else.”
And with the dissatisfied parties leaving to pursue their own fulfillment I think we can expect much less drama and conflict now that everyone is calling themselves something they’re happy with. As far as I’m concerned the schism is over. What a year.
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Post by thekeeper on Jan 29, 2018 12:12:34 GMT -5
After a bit more time and information I’m changing my interpretation of the leaving of the genre/community. Having talked to some folks I now see this move to ditch the tag as an act of deference. Basically a “we disagree and we probably always will, but because the term seems to apply more to what you’re doing than what we’re doing then you can have the name, we’ll find something else.” And with the dissatisfied parties leaving to pursue their own fulfillment I think we can expect much less drama and conflict now that everyone is calling themselves something they’re happy with. As far as I’m concerned the schism is over. What a year. I assumed as much, and that makes sense to some degree. It would certainly have been illogical to not call yourself DS in order to be more DS now after they're all quite established. But still, is anyone going to not call them DS at this point if their sound stays the same? I suppose the personal identification is the only one that matters, however.
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Post by nahadoth on Jan 29, 2018 14:41:57 GMT -5
I'm always glad to see attempts at reconciliation especially since the conflict seemed so meaningless, no matter how variously I was invested in it over the course of the last year.
I do notice some choice words in the album description for the new Old Tower preorder:
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Tyrannus
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Jan 29, 2018 15:51:06 GMT -5
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Post by Tyrannus on Jan 29, 2018 15:51:06 GMT -5
I'm always glad to see attempts at reconciliation especially since the conflict seemed so meaningless, no matter how variously I was invested in it over the course of the last year. I do notice some choice words in the album description for the new Old Tower preorder: This anti-modernity trend is also interesting to me. Does enjoying elements of the past and present have to be mutually exclusive?
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Jan 29, 2018 18:05:56 GMT -5
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Post by nahadoth on Jan 29, 2018 18:05:56 GMT -5
THe modernity angle is interesting. You've used the word Atavism to describe this attitude before Tyrannus and I think it's the kind of vague position that would probably fall apart under close scrutiny, but anyone who has any feelings of isolation from mainstream culture (probably anyone who listened to metal as an adolescent) could fill in ththe blanks and find that kind of vague statement to be super profound. Well I'm also interested at the point made in describing Shadow Kingsom /OT as very personal. Aside from obviously trolly projects in the Bandcamp tag, I have a hard time thinking of anything that doesn't feel personal, especially online when you get the chance to chat with so many of the creators of this work. Maybe this is in reference to projects which use Tolkien or other existing intellectual property for inspiration, or maybe it could be fear mongering against projects which seem to be made quickly. Seems to me like another way at taking a jab at projects perceived as "less good" but in disguise.
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Jan 29, 2018 22:33:59 GMT -5
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Post by andrewwerdna on Jan 29, 2018 22:33:59 GMT -5
It looks like Old Tower still tags his stuff on bandcamp as dungeon synth, so does this really apply in his case?
Also I'm curious what Verminaard said about this. I couldn't find the post you guys were talking about.
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Tyrannus
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Post by Tyrannus on Jan 30, 2018 0:12:01 GMT -5
It looks like Old Tower still tags his stuff on bandcamp as dungeon synth, so does this really apply in his case? Also I'm curious what Verminaard said about this. I couldn't find the post you guys were talking about.
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Jan 30, 2018 4:37:16 GMT -5
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Post by andrewwerdna on Jan 30, 2018 4:37:16 GMT -5
Interesting... Does "all affiliated groups" include the trve ds group? I remember him saying part of the goal of the trve group was to avoid drama too, and likewise I think this has the potential for opposite effect, but he does seem sincere about his intentions.
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Post by Carl Shoemaker on Jan 30, 2018 6:46:22 GMT -5
speaking of the Old Tower statement there, and I saw it posted in an interview. I don't like how he (rhetorical) cuts down other acts as not being true DS or whatever, silly fantasy music. maybe I'm the only one that interprets this as callous.
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