Noisy Memories From Another Time
What does nostalgia sound like? Is it a fragment of a childhood melody, a dusty cassette tape in a basement – or something more elusive that appears only in fleeting glimpses? In the genre of dungeon synth, it is neither old instruments nor authentic recordings that awaken the longing for what once was. Here nostalgia emerges in the noise, in the decay, and in the analogue shadows of a past that has long since vanished, yet still feels strangely familiar. In many ways, one might call it a nostalgic music. But is that really how it is experienced?
Cassette tapes in particular – the medium on which the music was released in the 1990s – have fascinated the new generation of musicians
The forgotten ghosts
Dungeon synth began in the early 2010s as an attempt to recall the more obscure solo projects from the margins of black metal, where musicians such as Mortiis, Wongraven, Depressive Silence, and Burzum once reigned. As often happens with revival movements, however, the return soon became something different from its point of departure.
The new wave of musicians who rediscovered the music on YouTube and websites like Dungeon Synth Blog quickly began connecting it with other genres such as kosmische musik, dark ambient, and the soundtracks of older video games. Cassette tapes in particular – the medium on which the music was released in the 1990s – have fascinated the new generation of musicians, even though the music today largely lives a digital life.
Within this digital underground, artists such as Erang, Fief, and Hedge Wizard have embraced these forgotten sounds—not to recreate a golden past, but rather to summon its nostalgic ghosts. This is especially evident in the work of the French musician Erang, whose album Another World, Another Time from 2013 has become an important work in the history of dungeon synth. But what does it actually mean for something to be nostalgic?
Nostalgic culture does not always attempt to glorify the past – and certainly not in dungeon synth
The gap between past and present
Nostalgia involves both a positive and a negative feeling, often experienced as bittersweet. There can be pleasure in remembering the past, but also bitterness in knowing that what one longs for will never truly return. In this sense, nostalgia can be understood as a kind of historical feeling that arises when there is a gap between past and present. In other words, one cannot be nostalgic about something one still has.
If you place a Polaroid photo from a childhood beach holiday on your desk and look at it every day, you may enjoy the memory of that holiday, but it will probably not feel particularly nostalgic because you are constantly looking at it. If, on the other hand, you put the photo away in a drawer and only rediscover it ten years later, it will likely feel far more nostalgic. It is precisely this distance from the past that creates the condition for nostalgia.
Nostalgia, however, has also gained a reputation for often being associated with reactionary cultural movements that wish to return to an earlier time imagined to have been better. One need look no further than the United States and the entire »Make America Great Again« movement to see a textbook example of this. Such nostalgia often attempts to repair the cracks between past and present in an effort to recreate what once existed.
The music is lo-fi, murky, and at once epic and melancholic
But nostalgic culture does not always attempt to glorify the past – and certainly not in dungeon synth. Instead of seeing decay as something that must be repaired and renewed, the musicians’ fascination with, for example, cassette tape noise can be understood as a way of using patina to come into contact with the past. This does not happen in order to recreate it, but to remember it, fully aware that what has been lost will never truly return.
Another world, another time
The title of Erang’s album Another World, Another Time could hardly be more fitting. In many ways the album belongs both to another world and another time than our own. When listening to it, one is quickly drawn into an atmospheric sonic universe that Erang himself calls the Land of the Five Seasons, where all the songs take place.
Here simple, repeating melodies played on digital imitations of everything from lute and harp to flute, piano, strings, synthesizers, and generous amounts of reverb create a fairy-tale-like image of how we imagine medieval music might have sounded – yet filtered through a digital dream. The music is lo-fi, murky, and at once epic and melancholic.
The album’s title is inspired by the opening line of the dark-fantasy film The Dark Crystal (1982), but it also references the computer game Another World from 1991. These are not the only inspirations from the world of video games found on the album. In earlier interviews, Erang has explained that he was heavily inspired by classic retro games such as The Legend of Zelda (1986) and Secret of Mana (1993) when composing the music.
To step through this portal requires the right key, and this is where noise enters the picture
What Erang creates, then, is not just arbitrary fantasy music. It is fantasy music as it sounded when Erang himself was a child. In this way the music becomes a kind of portal – not only to another world, but to another time. More precisely, to the time in which Erang grew up. But to step through this portal requires the right key, and this is where noise enters the picture.
Time, noise, and loss in dungeon synth
Where media technology has historically attempted to eliminate noise, this is precisely what Erang tries to produce. Analogue noise, after all, is very effective at evoking nostalgia. The sound quality of analogue media such as cassette tapes gradually fades over time, allowing the passage of time to be heard within the medium itself.
When Erang uses vinyl noise and tape crackle in his music, or fading, crackling textures on his album covers, it can be understood as a way of reintroducing a sense of loss and decay into an otherwise highly digital music that could easily have been noise-free – if that had been his intention. But it is not.
At the same time, it is not the overwhelming roar familiar from the metal world. Instead, the noise resides more subtly in the background or within the lo-fi timbre of the digital instruments Erang uses on the album. In this way, the noise creates a musical gap between past and present by making the songs sound older than they actually are.
It is within this gap that nostalgic memory – like a ghost – can emerge from the graves of the past and enter the present, even if the music itself is new. But does it always feel nostalgic when listening to the music? And what is it that Erang actually longs for in the past?
»I’m not mourning nor longing for some golden age«
Nostalgia as a conversation with the past
As described earlier, nostalgia is often associated with a longing for an idealised past and a desire to return to »when things were better«. But this is not the case with Erang. Instead, we encounter what the Russian-American cultural theorist Svetlana Boym would call reflective nostalgia. It is a form of nostalgia that does not attempt to recreate what has been lost, but rather to enter into dialogue with it.
As Erang himself puts it: »I’m not mourning nor longing for some golden age. I strongly cherish my fond memories but use them as a positive strength of inspiration.«
For Erang, then, the point is not to recreate or beautify the past, but to remember it through patina and to use childhood memories as a creative force. This form of reflective nostalgic experience does not apply only to Erang himself – it can also be shared by others who carry similar memories.
In this way the music becomes a way of remembering and entering into dialogue with the past, fully aware that it will never truly return. The decay in the sound – tape noise, digital lo-fi distortion, and other sonic artefacts – should therefore not be seen as flaws, but as something central to the listening experience.
As with all art, however, there is no guarantee that listeners will actually feel what the artist himself felt or hoped to evoke through the music. Whether one experiences nostalgia when listening depends largely on personal memories and experiences, but also on the shared historical memories we have of what it felt like to live in a particular time.
Like the Polaroid photograph on the desk, dungeon synth can also end up overexposing the past in the present – and thereby gradually filling the very gap that once made the nostalgic experience possible in the first place. Put differently: the more one listens, the more familiar the sound becomes, and the weaker the nostalgia grows.
The genre has branched out into a wide array of subcategories – from dino-synth and grandma-synth to the more absurd hotdog-synth
Instead, nostalgia in dungeon synth can be seen as a feeling that over time has become more of a genre trait – an important element in the music’s aesthetic language.
A genre still growing
Since Another World, Another Time was released in 2013, the genre has branched out into a wide array of subcategories – from dino-synth and grandma-synth to the more absurd hotdog-synth.
Especially after the COVID-19 pandemic, dungeon synth has gained increased attention, and a flourishing of small genre festivals has begun to appear across both Europe and the United States.
The genre remains in constant motion, and although many newer dungeon synth musicians do not necessarily seek the same nostalgic experience that Erang pursued back in 2013, the nostalgic traits from that time continue to live on as aesthetic foundations within the music.
English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek