ArtiArtist: Blades Of Folmar
Title: Dungeon Cynth: Solo Dark Fantasy TTRPG Powered By Dungeon Synth
Type: Album.
Label: Digital / Sokol Keep / Privy Press
This is a little longer in the writing that is usual as, well, I had to experience the TTRPG included with this too (and you will find the results of this HERE ).
But let us all, for a moment, be honest: Isn’t it lovely to get something like a scenario, a game, a solo adventure with the music? As our imagination intended. And I certainly had fun with it even if the dice were, for once, very much with me…
So to the music.
‘Forbidden Notes (Accidental Invocation Of Khothor)’ is slow, dark and has a gorgeuos deep sound. Electronic pulses and echoes as though the notes are feeling their way towards something; a composition perhaps? A ripple of the ominous and then the melody picks up with purpose. A scholar or a bard taking small steps into the unknown toward their next work, feeling and feeding their imagination from the shifting shadows in their keep. Alone, unbothered by servants or moneylenders, the work is all. The music is just fantastic; excellent sound indeed, resonant and layered, a silken backdrop with gems both cut and uncut sparkling across it. The exploration slowly comes together, the notes unnoticed as forbidden but…
‘Alone In The Keep, Cynth Reflects’ is indeed a moment of I think wonder at what they may be producing but the air has changed. A strange, almost rough or rasping whispering synth work, the sounds of the void intruding upon the keep as perhaps things the artist should consider. They have indeed done something. The music has that wonderful twin feeling; the contained hope and joy at creation in the guitar notes and the concern that perhaps some things should not be touched upon beautifully protrayed.
‘Omens Of Khothor’ come in many forms. The void seems to move slowly, and with foreboding, but speed is illusory to one who had traverse the dimensions. What is speed when distance is as nothing? But perhaps for all omens are not always ill, merely what they are? The music has a fascination to it, a pull with the melodic refrain slowly circling with beauty and delicacy as the unknown haunts the background sounds. Its like having your face pressed to the cold glass of some exhibit where lights dance so sweetly that the darkness behind you is of little concern as the price.
So ‘Cynth Advances’. The work must be completed before the coming laying of waste. More exploration in notes still of uncertainty but with a strong, all consuming purpose beating the drum, pushing back doubts. The melody has a lovely touch of the goth to it – that early Clan Of Xymox echoing bass sound that sometimes moves ones feet towards a slow, introspective dance. Is Khothor close? This is so good, so very good. If Khothor is the price, then, please accept my subscription.
‘Tape Wyrm’ hisses and crackles in the way of old tech, make do tech. An interruption to the Great Working. ‘Clavis Draconis (Dragon Key)’ may be a side quest, a short journey from the working but, ah, all experience feeds into The Working. There is a grandeur to this, the melody raising images of royalty not human so much and a moment to experience the emptiness or arching halls.
‘And If The World Should End’ muses Cynth. The steady, object thought of the weaver of music in the Keep. “What would change?” asks the thoughtful piano music. “What would we miss? Is the exchange a good one?” If the world outside the Keep cares nothing for the composer should the composer, the hermit, care much for the world? If we have created is that a price worth it, to be the last image in the mind of a world that then ceases? It is a track deep in thought indeed, but the thoughts feel turned inwards, concern not for the world but for the absence and what it might mean. It is not cold music, it has warmth and emotion in its gentle wrapping cloth yet perhaps the concern is from a place of loneliness and the outsider…
‘The Wastelayer Draws Near’ urges on the music. It is tantalisingly close to completion, as is the moment of all ending. The music has the breath of the herald to it; odd choral notes, an atmosphere that is, at last ominous. There is a tension too, that fear of perhaps not failing to complete The Working, but of rushing and missing that perfect note in that perfect place. But the presence draws near and, perhaps it weaves itself into the music. The melody and the background shift places, the presence overwhelming the work, or the work becoming the arrival itself?
Is Khothor here yet?
You blink and, yes it has come to pass. The ‘Manifestation Of Khothor’ is upon you. A glittering presence, strange in the aspect of a wastelayer? Or simply a being so far beyond out comprehension that we see it…strangely. But in that brief moment Cynth perhaps senses something light delight.
The world begins to burn, empires fall beneath the arrival, but Cynth watches from afar. There is ‘Musicmancery At The Court Of Chaos’ as it might seem that the music, the vibrations and the summonging and weaving of forbidden notes has please Khothor. Khothor laughs as they lay waste to the world as is their nature, but the music, the song of the spears and of the fires must go on. So Cynth is now the spectre at every feast, the house band for a place where there is no house except for one lonely place On The Borderland. It is music full of the void, the rippling, pulsing infinity Cynth composed so far back joined by a melody of awe and praise that floats over the sense of softly bubbling chaos in the background sounds. An absolutely dark and beautiful end to our tale.
This is a joy; not only with the adventure included, but the dark ambient, the electronica to this dungeon sound. It is contradictory as it feels both self contained in some mystic bubble and yet reaches across the ether into voids and dimensions.
Cosmic, dark and absolutely encrusted with beauty and awe, and should you seek it a pinch of dark humour this is just part of the soul that resides within dungeon synth.
Gizmo
The Coming of Khothor – Soundtrack to the TTRPG “Dungeon Cynth” | Blades of Folmär
Dungeon Cynth – TTRPG w/Blades of Folmär | Blades of Folmär | SOKOL KEEP
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