Dungeon Synth
Ambient · 1995 · also known as Dungeon Music, Comfy Synth
Born in the margins of Norwegian black metal in the early 1990s: cheap keyboards conjure the music of crypts and fortresses, deliberately lo-fi, steeped in the imagery of fantasy and role-playing games. Mortiis founded the lineage. Resurrected in the 2010s by Bandcamp into a teeming worldwide scene, cassettes included, it is, quite literally, the ambient music of dungeons.
13 reference tracks
- Wongraven: Fra Fjelltronen (1995)
- Depressive Silence: Mourning (1996)
- Secret Stairways: Enchantment of the Ring (1997)
- Old Tower: The Rise of the Specter (2017)
- Vöghräth: Demo 7" (2021)
- Erang: The Kingdom Is Ours (with Fief) (2024)
- Hole Dweller: Hole In One (2025)
- Depressive Silence: Dreams
- Depressive Silence: Depths of the Oceans
- Hole Dweller: With Dreams of Adventure, I Smoke from My Longpipe Beneath the Stars
- Hole Dweller: Morning Rain by the Overhill Yards, a Harvest of Wet Lumber
- Wongraven: Opp under fjellet toner en sang
- Wongraven: Over ødemark
At a glance
- First appeared: around 1995
- Machines: Magnétophone à cassette, Clavier General MIDI, Réverbération numérique
- The sound: Claviers GM bon marché, Réverbération cheap assumée, Enregistrement cassette, Banques orchestrales naïves
- Labels: Dungeons Deep Records, Out Of Season, Cold Meat Industry, Hospital Productions, Dark Dungeon Music, Moonfog Productions
- Key artists: Mortiis, Wongraven, Depressive Silence, Old Tower, Secret Stairways
Producing Dungeon Synth
This is the family's exception, a real meter and pulse, between 60 and 100 BPM, often in 3/4 or 6/8 like a medieval dance, sometimes a slow 4/4 for crypt pieces. The charm comes from stiffness: strict quantization to the quarter or eighth note, no swing, no humanization, this is a General MIDI keyboard's sequencer playing, not a musician, though tempos vary between tracks on an album. Drums are often absent, and when present come from cheap orchestral banks: timpani on beats 1 and 3, a roll ending each eight-bar phrase, a tambourine on the weak beats, fixed velocities throughout. The real rhythm comes from the keyboard's left hand, quarter or half notes marking the meter like a folk hymn on an organ, or a steady harpsichord arpeggio where there is no percussion.
The full production course, in French: tempo, drums, bass, sounds, arrangement, mix, plugins and machines, and a step by step start.
Frequently asked
What is Dungeon Synth?
Born in the margins of Norwegian black metal in the early 1990s: cheap keyboards conjure the music of crypts and fortresses, deliberately lo-fi, steeped in the imagery of fantasy and role-playing games. Mortiis founded the lineage. Resurrected in the 2010s by Bandcamp into a teeming worldwide…
Who are the key Dungeon Synth artists?
Mortiis, Wongraven, Depressive Silence, Old Tower, Secret Stairways.
In the same family
Listen to Dungeon Synth in the atlas · Cette page en français
