Interview: Vaelastrasz
Reclaiming the Spectral Dawn has been one of my favorite albums that I’ve discovered this year. Few works of art have done as much to bring back the memories of playing in the woods behind my house as a kid with nothing but a stick and my imagination. I reached out to Min “Vaelastrasz” Naing to thank her for putting this album out. If you haven’t listened to it yet, I cannot recommend strongly enough that you do so. Min was kind enough to respond to my email. I had the chance to sit down with her last weekend to discuss her musical journey, her thoughts on the past and future of dungeon synth, and the process of finding one’s sound.
RT: Thanks so much for agreeing to do this by the way, I really appreciate it!
Vaelastrasz: Yeah! I’m always down for stuff like this so thanks for finding the time!
RT: Yeah, of course! I know you already read my little email but seriously, thank you for putting out that album. That album was probably the most that a dungeon synth record has ever emotionally impacted me. And I didn’t expect it to because, you know, I seldom anticipate walking away from dungeon synth—as much as I enjoy it—having had an emotional experience. Normally it’s like “Whoa that was really pretty,” but that one was like… That one was good. That one meant a lot.
Vaelastrasz: Thank you so much. That really means a lot.
RT: So where are you from?
Vaelastrasz: I was born and raised in Fairfax, Virginia and I still live in northern Virginia. My parents are two Burmese immigrants, which was always weird growing up because no one in the West really knows what Burma/Myanmar is. People always think I’m either Vietnamese or Thai or whatever and then when I say that I’m Burmese they’re either like “Oh OK, I kind of know where that is,” or “What the fuck is a Myanmar? What the fuck is Burma?” One of the best stories about that is this one time I was talking to this good ol’ boy from the South and he was like “Min, where the hell are you from?” and I told him I’m from Burma. “Burma? The hell’s a Burma?” And I said “Burmese? Does that ring a bell?” and he said “Oh shit! Like the python?A Burmese Python?” And I was like “Yeah man, let’s go with that,” so I’ve had a very bizarre way of telling people where I’m from or where I am, but for betterment’s sake, I am from the DC area.
RT: And how did you get into dungeon synth? I feel like it’s not really a genre that people get into by accident. It’s something that people kind of go looking for. What was your journey towards getting into dungeon synth?
Vaelastrasz: I got into it mostly because of black metal and also drone metal, weirdly enough. The black metal aspect kind of came naturally. I was listening to stuff in high school and I didn’t really click with stuff like Summoning, Emperor, Satyricon, Darkthrone, all the big names. Black metal didn’t really click with me until I listened to Mutilation, which is weird, but I always looked at Mutilation and the French Black Legion Circle as being like outsider musicians. And I always had an appreciation, especially when I was a teenager, for guys like Daniel Johnston and Wesley Willis. So I kind of looked at the LLN (Les Legions Noires) like Moëvöt and Vlad Tepes and all those acts as outsider music. The other way I got into dungeon synth is I have a very huge love for drone metal. I listened to a lot of Earth and Boris and Sunn O))). Those are really important bands for me. I had found out about this band on the internet called Trollmann av Ildtoppberg, and I always name drop them in every interview because they are legitimately the quintessential act that got me into making dungeon synth. Dawn Terry is an amazing musician and albums like The Forest of Doom and Dark Clouds Blacken The Sky On The Eve Of The Thousandth Sacrifice are both phenomenal, amazing, seminal albums. Like, I wasn’t able to get into dungeon synth proper back then. I listened to Mortiis and I thought it was OK. I tried listening to Depressive Silence and thought it was OK, but when I listened to the LLN and I listened to Moëvöt and I listened to Aakon Keetreh and then listened to Trollmann av Ildtoppberg, I was like “I get it. This is how you’re supposed to make this shit. This is how you’re supposed to really be immersed in this type of music.”
RT: Dungeon Synth by its nature is kind of a droney and repetitive genre. It’s got a lot of looping melodies and things that you keep coming back to. What, to you, makes for a good loop? What makes something repetitive good as opposed to just feeling repetitive? How do you keep it fresh?
Vaelastrasz: Good repetition is all about creating and conjuring the perfect melody. You have to really hook someone in with one specific melodic hook. If you can’t get them with that melodic hook then it’s not really looping over. Once you’re able to get someone with that hook then you kind of have to ask yourself “OK, what can I add to make this even better and even bigger?” And at that point it’s all just instinct. For me, I’ll find that a chord or a melody will stick in my head and I’ll record a voice memo of what’s in my head. Then I’ll end up recording that on a keyboard. Once I get that in it’s just like “OK, would a flute sound good there? Would a string patch sound good there? What would the percussion be like if there is any?” And that’s where it leads into a good melody. A bad melody or a bad repetition is when you’re just kind of mashing your fingers and you’re like “This sounds kind of kvlt! This sounds kind of trve!” and you don’t do anything else with it. You’re just kind of doing that for like 3-5 minutes. And maybe for a couple of people that might be cool, but for everyone else, that’s been done before. So there’s definitely a difference. It’s all about a good melodic hook. A good melody can really entrance someone. I made a song that was about 22 minutes of the same melody over and over again. It’s just layers and layers and layers of just added on instruments. It was fun and people loved it. It’s just entrancing. It’s drone, and good drone music is able to really make a listener zone out for a good amount of time.
RT: I know this can be one of the most annoying questions to be asked in an interview, but where do you take inspiration from for your music? Do you ever find subjects that you want to write an album about specifically?
Vaelastrasz: Early on it was World of Warcraft, but I’ve kind of moved away from that. But there are still a lot of elements in it that I still want to go back to. I’ll think “I want to make an album about this” because it evoked this type of feeling about me. I’ll find myself wanting to write an album about this character or that character because they evoked a certain feeling. For example, I released an album in 2019 called Sunstrider which was a conceptual album about the character Kael’thas Sunstrider from the Warcraft lore. I’ve had a soft spot for Kael’thas ever since Warcraft III. I thought he was a very intriguing character, but then when World of Warcraft comes he’s just kind of… I don’t know, I’m just not a big fan of how they treat a lot of these characters come Burning Crusade. They kind of do this thing where they’re like “Hey, remember Illidan? Remember Lady Vashj? Yeah, they’re here and you can kill them!” I always felt like these were pretty cool characters that they introduced in Warcraft III and I don’t want to kill them for loot purposes, that’s kind of weird. They kind of redeemed them later on and in later expansions as far as I remember, but still.
RT: Yeah, I mean, I could probably take my grandma in a fight and steal her wallet. That doesn’t mean I want to.
Vaelastrasz: Exactly, yeah. Kael’thas is just like my grandmother, you’re so right. (Laughs) This elven man is just like everyone’s grandmother. But yeah, there are certain areas that I want to make music about. Ahn’Qiraj, I wanted to make an album about that and eventually made it. There’s Winterspring which, for now, is the final Warcraft-ish album that I want to make. I made an album about that because it’s a very underrated zone especially pre-Cataclysm when the whole area shifted and changed. That’s kind of what I wanted to make music for and about. As for how I go about with musical influences, melodies are constantly just stuck in my head. They usually come out of nowhere when I’m at work and I’ll have to go to another room in the office somewhere and then hum it as a voice memo to myself. Once I’ve done that, I can concentrate on the rest of the day, but if I don’t do that then either the melody will be gone forever or it’s just going to be stuck in my head throughout the entirety of the day and I won’t able able to get any work done, so I have to do that. It’s constant and it’s part of the reason that I don’t think I’ll ever see myself stopping this. I remember early on, around 2019 I released an album called The Birth of Naxxramas—and I even posted it a couple times publicly—I said “Yeah, I think this is going to be my last album,” and meanwhile, five years later, I’m still releasing music. It’s an itch. It’s this non-stop itch in my brain that says “You’ve gotta get this out, now.” It’s like my brain is asking me “Do you really want yourself to be the only person that hears this? Don’t you want to put this out for a few others to listen to this as well?” So I don’t think I can stop making music because of that. It’s weird, but it really is my brain telling me “You have to do this.” So unless my brain decides to give up, turn gray, and settle down somewhere, I don’t think I can see myself stopping.
RT: I get those when I’m on the verge of falling asleep. I’ll just notice that my brain is playing a melody and then start groping for my phone in the middle of the night, open my voice memo app, and sing this melody through my super tired voice and then think to myself “Well, we’ll see if that’s any good in the morning.” And sometimes I wake up and it was really good, but most of the time I wake up, listen to it and go “Man, what was wrong with me?”
Vaelastrasz: Yeah, I’m not saying that my brain’s on fire all the time. Sometimes I’ll wake up to like 30 different melodies and I’ll listen to 25 of them and think “Who let this fucker cook? This doesn’t make any sense! This is a pile of shit, I can’t use this!” So I just end up having a bunch of unused melodies that I just can’t do anything with because they sound like ass.
RT: Do you ever listen back to it later and go “Wait, that’s just the riff from X or Y song!” and then get kind of mad about it?
Vaelastrasz: Oh yeah, I’ll end up stealing a lot of random riffs inadvertently. My biggest fear is because of how big dungeon synth is and how there’s so many releases every day, every week, every month, my fear is that I’m going to steal some kid’s riff and have no idea. Like, there’s some imaginary kid out there named Tower Knight or whatever and they just released their hard-working demo of like 20-minute songs and I just stole his best song. What if that happens, you know? It’s this weird fear in the back of my head where I don’t want to be called out for stealing music but like, this could possibly happen. There’s only so many keys on the keyboard to play in different ways.
RT: How many dungeon synth albums have started with that MIDI trumpet drone note at the beginning with the creepy castle vibe? It feels like they all start on the same pitch too!
Vaelastrasz: Yeah, it’s always the same pitch! And then they decide to spice it up by doing a French horn instead. That’s not going to do anything dog, it just sounds the same!
RT: Does making music ever feel like work or something that you don’t want to do or does it feel more purely like a hobby?
Vaelastrasz: It does not feel like work until it starts feeling like work, and when it starts feeling like work I take a break from doing it. I can only really create and write music when a certain spark of creativity lights up my head. Right now I’m just kind of like “Alright, I’ve already put out an album this year, so I’m good, I’m fine, I don’t need to do it for… I don’t know, until next time.” And it’s definitely a seasonal thing too. Maybe in the summertime I’ll feel a lot more inspired or maybe in the wintertime I’ll feel more inspired, it’ll come and go here and there, but I can never force myself to just make art or make music because once you start forcing yourself, then it turns into a job. I don’t want it to feel like a job. Ever. Because there’s no fun in doing it at that point. What’s the reason for forcing yourself to make music? That’s not cool. You’re not taking the time that it needs for the ideas floating around in your head to really settle. So yeah, I don’t like it when it turns into work. I like it when it’s just purely a hobby that I can do in my spare time.
RT: How is the scene in DC? Is there a lot of support for dungeon synth there? Obviously dungeon synth is still a fairly underground genre and it’s not like a lot of artists go on tour or anything, but is there much of a scene in the greater DC area?
Vaelastrasz: Uh, no. (Laughs) No, just straight up no. It’s weird. You know, there’s always a few hotspots across America where everyone kind of connects, but DC and Virginia don’t really have a scene. It’s kind of weird. I believe Forgotten Relic recently moved to DC and then you have the Virginia artists like Foglord, who’s all the way down in the border of North Carolina.
RT: Foglord’s from Virginia?
Vaelastrasz: Foglord is from Virginia! And then you have Obsidian who’s smack dab in the center in Richmond, so we’re all just kind of scattered everywhere. We’ll play shows here and there together. I’ve been on the same bills with Foglord so many times. I was just playing with him in North Carolina and he even commented that I’ve popped up on the most bills with him. I think now it’s been four times that we’ve played with each other. Same thing with Obsidian. I think I’ve played with him three or four times now. So we play with each other every once in a while, but it’s not like we’re all close-knit or in the same scene, we’re all just kind of there. But yeah, it’s weird. I just kind of end up being the weird dark ambient person that floats about in the DC/Baltimore/Maryland metal scene as opposed to a dungeon synth person in a dungeon synth scene in the local area. That’s kind of how I am at the moment.
RT: They see you at concerts and they’re like “Oh hey, there’s that keyboard chick again.”
Vaelastrasz: Yeah, “There’s that dungeon synth fucker! Weird motherfucker!” I’m always somewhere in the corner drinking a Modelo watching the extreme metal band play in the background somewhere in Metro Gallery.
RT: “Do you think she’s able to comprehend more than 80 beats per minute?”
Vaelastrasz: Yeah, I go and I’m like “They have a guitar? What the fuck? Drums? No, you can’t do that! You have to have those pre-programmed!”
RT: “What do you mean I need a stick to make a drum sound? I have buttons for that! I don’t have to worry about re-tuning my snare!”
Vaelastrasz: “Where’s all the backing tracks? Where’s all the synth and key backing tracks?”
RT: Do you feel like there’s more of a tight-knit community for it online than there is in person?
Vaelastrasz: Absolutely! The online community is the reason why dungeon synth is as big as it is. It’s really a thing that connected a lot of people. When I started making music in 2016 or 2017, I didn’t know a lot of people that really fucked with the same thing that I do, especially in the area that I was in. So when I found out about the dungeon synth ProBoards and the forums and the dungeon synth communities on Facebook I was like “Oh shit, there’s people here that get what I’m doing and that also enjoy the same things that I’m doing? I have to be a part of this!” So because of that I’ve made so many friends through the online dungeon synth community and we’ve all met through the various festivals that have come here and there. Northeast Dungeon Siege is always the big one up in Worcester, Massachusetts and it’s always a great time. There’s always something so calming to me when I’m surrounded by people who understand what this is, you know? It’s one thing to be on a mixed bill with a metal band or whatever and you’re just kind of doing your thing. It’s another to be at a dungeon synth show or festival with people and fans that love the same stuff as you do, to play with artists that come from the same little niche as you do. There’s always something so life-affirming about it, about being surrounded by people who actually get it, so I’m really grateful for the online community but I’m even more grateful for those little moments when the online can get together in real life and truly bring some sort of magic into the world.
RT: Yeah, magic really is the term for it.
Vaelastrasz: It is! It really is! I can’t really describe it besides magic! As corny as it sounds, that’s what it really feels like.
RT: I’ve talked to my friends and family members about concerts being almost sacred places for me. I’m a pretty religious guy and outside of religious settings, the only place that I feel that kind of peace and sense of deep belonging is at concerts. It’s that feeling of being there with people who understand me and we’re all there to do something that we understand and I just get to turn off my brain and enjoy feeling whatever I’m going to feel as a part of this experience. So yeah, there absolutely is something magical about it and I think it’s a really beautiful thing.
Vaelastrasz: There’s a reason why black metal bands will call their shows “rituals.” It’s a little goofy, but in many aspects that’s what it is.
RT: Are there any other smaller, local dungeon synth events that go on in Virginia?
Vaelastrasz: No, not really. That’s why I just pop up at random festivals in America. I’ll be booked for this and that, but in terms of things in Virginia it would probably be in Richmond. The only dungeon synth shows I’ve ever played in Virginia were all in Richmond, and it was always Obsidian that booked them. We did a show in Richmond at Bandito’s, which is a burrito restaurant. They have a venue setting next to the actual restaurant, of course. I don’t know how that would work if you just played while people are eating burritos in a burrito setting. That’d be awesome but at the same time people would be like “What’s going on?”
RT: Oh yeah, but for the people that are only there for dungeon synth it’s like “Wait, there are burritos too?!”
Vaelastrasz: Yeah, it’s a good spot too! It was me, Obsidian, and Foglord. That was a good set. Earlier this year we played a gig in Richmond for the Questmaster tour, and that was a really fun tour. We played at the Cobra Cabana.
RT: Oh yeah, I love the Cobra! It’s, like, the dingiest venue I’ve ever been to and I love it. That’s where I saw Weedeater the second time.
Battlemaster at the Cobra Cabana, 2022. Image via YouTube.
Vaelastrasz: Yeah, it was a fun little gig! But yeah, there’s no festival in Virginia, but every once in a blue moon there’s going to be a dungeon synth bill in Virginia and it’s most likely going to be somewhere in Richmond.
RT: Obviously a lot of dungeon synth is made using keyboards. Did you have any musical experience before you started making dungeon synth, specifically with playing piano or keyboards?
Vaelastrasz: I’m not classically trained at all. All of it comes from the head. But I would take music classes in middle school and there would be these lull periods where we were all trying to practice the piece. I would get the piece down kind of naturally and I figured out that the keyboard had all these weird random settings on it. I would play around with those settings when I got bored and I think something sparked in me a little bit. That spark mostly disappeared until later in high school when I was surrounded by a lot of my friends who were either huge music nerds or were forming bands. I wanted to be included and wanted to be a musician too, so I would just record really crappy music or really goofy shitty inside joke music and then send it to my friends. “Here’s what I did on this cheap Casio keyboard, isn’t this fucking goofy?”
RT: They call that comfy synth now.
Vaelastrasz: Oh no no no, we don’t use that word. You can’t say the C-word to me, come on brother! If you say “comfy” at certain dungeon synth festivals, you might get jumped.
RT: (Laughs) It’s like the equivalent of wearing a Hate Forest shirt to a black metal show. Everyone’s like “Alright, let’s get this guy out of here.”
Vaelastrasz: Yeah, like come on dude, get the fuck out of here.
RT: “Skrewdriver, dude? Come on!”
Vaelastrasz: I think it would be funny if you went to a show and there were these two dudes: one’s in a Grandma’s Cottage shirt and the other’s in a Peste Noire shirt, who do you fight?
RT: (Laughs) Dude, that’s hard, man!
Vaelastrasz: You have one bullet, who do you kill?
RT: Man, would I rather bully the white supremacist or the weirdo? Who needs it more?
Vaelastrasz: (Laughs) Yeah, who needs it more? Who’s this going to satiate more? The people who are absolutely against Nazis or the five people who are vehemently against a very, super niche genre? (Laughs) Man, how did we get here? Oh right, high school! So I released this joke ambient concept album about a platypus in space or whatever and I showed it to my friends and they were like “Wait a minute, hold on. This is actually kind of good. For you. I know it’s a low bar since you’ve got no musical training, but this actually does sound kind of cool.” So I started delving into more ambient music and I was like “What if I just became a weird Bandcamp keyboard ambient person like everyone else?” And that’s what I kind of slowly delved into and it just naturally morphed into dungeon synth. That was how it really started.
RT: Did you feel like learning the keyboard was a barrier to entry? And how comfortable do you feel on keyboards now? Do you feel fluent in it or do you still have to feel around for the right key to complete the melody that’s in your head?
Vaelastrasz: Nowadays I’m very comfortable with the keyboard. I’ve reached a sort of blocking point with learning specific things about how to play the piano and keyboard properly, but compared to me almost ten years ago trying to figure this shit out, I’m definitely a lot more comfortable with how I play the keys and synths. It comes naturally to me at this point. Early on I was kind of just mashing my hands on keys to see what works together so to speak. I’d find things and think “This kind of sounds cool,” and it steadily grew into something better.
RT: How do you usually explain dungeon synth to the people that ask about it and how many people in your life know that you make dungeon synth?
Vaelastrasz: In terms of how I describe it to people, there’s many ways. Usually with my co-workers—because they’ll find out I’m playing a show one weekend and ask “Min, what do you do?”—and I’ll tell them that I’m an ambient musician. That’s the best way to really describe it. I’m an electronic ambient artist. If they want to delve deeper into what I actually do, I’ll tell them that it’s like… darker ambient, fantasy ambient, and people usually get annoyed when you say “video game music,” but that’s kind of what it is. For a lot of people who are trying to figure out what dungeon synth is, it’s easy to compare it to video game music if you want that idea to translate well to people. It’s kind of like old-school video game music or RuneScape music. A friend of mine at a show came up to me last night and said “One of my friends saw your show in Raleigh and they said that your music was ‘loading screen-core,’” and I was like “Hm. Interesting.” I had never heard that before, but you know what? We’ll take it. But yeah, everyone kind of knows that that’s what I do. Even my parents know that’s what I do and they’re super supportive. I might have the world’s most supportive parents for dungeon synth. You know what I mean? They were like “Do you need a new keyboard or anything? We’ll buy you some new equipment as a gift!”
RT: Awww!
Vaelastrasz: And I was like “That’s so sweet! No, but thank you!” They’re always so supportive. And all my friends who don’t even listen to the music or don’t listen to very much of it know that that’s what I do, so yeah, everyone that even slightly knows me knows that I do this weird thing where I dress up in a costume and I play spooky music from my keyboard.
RT: How do you feel like you found your sound? Or do you feel like you’ve found it? I know that for some people they just feel like they’ve always had it and it just feels intrinsic.
Vaelastrasz: It’s been weird finding my sound because I didn’t really find my sound until a couple years into making it and I didn’t consistently start doing it until a few years in. People have their preferences on what they enjoy and what they don’t enjoy when it comes to dungeon synth and dark ambient music. Early on I decided that I wanted to have a bit of a diverse discography because I didn’t want to keep sounding the same, especially with how I just keep on putting out stuff. But early on I was like “Let’s do minimalistic stuff,” and then “What if this kind of sounded like black metal?” or “What if this was just pure ambient music with a soft guitar?” or “What if this one was just pure drone metal?” So I was just throwing things at the wall for the first couple of years. It wasn’t until Return to the Plaguelands came out—and The Plaguelands helped out as well, but that was very minimalistic—but it kind of laid the groundwork for what I ended up doing, but for me Return to the Plaguelands is when I really found my sound. It was a sound that I enjoyed. Not only that, but it was a sound that a lot of people really stuck with. That was the first album where everyone was like “Hey, wait a minute. That’s awesome. Keep doing that. Whatever you’re doing, just keep doing that.” Then after that I released two other albums that didn’t sound like that and I was like “Wait, why did I stop doing that?” So after a while I decided that I had found the thing. I’d found my thing that I’m going to base the sound on. Then come 2019 I put out The Red Whelpling and The Birth of Naxxramas and that’s when I started really homing in on what my quote-unquote “sound” is supposed to be. Since then I’ve just kind of rocked with that sound. A little variance here and there. I try to change it up and do things a little differently, but that was when I started becoming a lot more comfortable. That’s when I started putting a lot more “me” in making the music that I make.
Return to the Plaguelands
RT: Are there any trends that you’ve noticed in dungeon synth since its resurgence in the 2010s? Do you have any insights on where the genre might be headed?
Vaelastrasz: Yeah, I can’t wait for the first dungeon synth artist to headline Coachella. (Laughs)
RT: I want to see Fief at Coachella so bad, dude.
Vaelastrasz: Yo, Thangorodrim at Coachella? Let’s go! No, but really, it’s been weird seeing it go from a niche underground genre to what it is now. I came into it around 2016 or 2017. Then the Bandcamp article came out that highlighted the entire dungeon synth scene. From then on, it just started steamrolling. You’d see articles from random websites popping up here and there, you’d see a random YouTube video essay explaining what dungeon synth is, and it’s just been nuts. Artists popping up and doing live shows, playing bills, and even full-blown tours for nothing but dungeon synth. I remember in the mid to late 2010s there was a weird little movement to try and implement more noise into dungeon synth stuff and that didn’t really catch on with a lot of people. A lot of the goofiness kind of came out later on, especially in the early 2020s. Which I guess we’re still technically in, but you know, 2020 and 2021. Comfy synth stuff and a lot of the more gimmicky acts that have come out since then. They’re not really going to go anywhere, you know. And it’s not my position to vocally hate on any of this stuff, but deep down we all know that it’s not going to go anywhere. Dungeon synth, for its woes, does have a really good filter. It’s really good at showing you who the good artists are.
RT: It really does.
Vaelastrasz: Those are the ones that blow up. Those are the ones that are going to be booked for festivals. Those are the ones that are going to be booked for live shows. Some of those are going to be the ones that have crossover appeal with people that just don’t know what dungeon synth is. I love Questmaster. I love Fief. These are the artists that are going to cross over into a broader audience and have a wider appeal.
RT: Yeah, they say that the cream always rises to the top, and I think that there are some genres where that is more true than others, but with dungeon synth it really is true. There will always be really great artists that nobody’s heard of, but for the most part we’ve done a pretty good job of making it so that the ones who have really gotten this down and have gotten really good at what they do are pretty easily accessible and are pretty easy to find and hear about.
Vaelastrasz: And there’s also the unfortunate thing where there are a lot of artists that were talked about in the late 2010s who were artists that people loved. They got talked about a lot in the community and the scene would talk about their new releases for a few months. People would put them on their year-end lists and because of how times have changed and how the scene has evolved, especially with how many people are playing live shows nowadays and all the festivals that have popped up since then that are all across America and Europe and so forth, they kind of ended up getting lost in the pack and left behind. So there is that downside, unfortunately. It’s a thing that I’ve talked about with a couple of artists too. “Remember this person? Remember that person? They were talked about a lot on the Facebook community or on the ProBoards.” And then people just stopped talking about them. So there is that filter that we’re talking about and it’s great, but unfortunately I feel like there have been a few artists that have been sadly forgotten and need to be brought back up again.
RT: Are there any of those artists, old or new, that you would want to give a shout-out to?
Vaelastrasz: Oh, I can name a bunch. There’s definitely artists that we would talk about in the scene that we need to bring up again! We gotta talk about these dinguses again! Because what happened? Where are we going? Faery Ring needs to be brought back up. I think Trogool needs to be brought back up again. Medhelen, Wintercry, Soy Fan Del Dark was a great dungeon noise project, Mausolei, Carwylm was another good one, Knight’s Quest…
RT: Oh, Knight’s Quest, yeah!
Vaelastrasz: Yeah, that demo was fucking amazing. I think that without a doubt the dungeon synth artist’s favorite dungeon synth artist is Ranseur. He played NEDS (Northeast Dungeon Siege) in 2019. He had a really great, minimalist goblin synth sound. It was very heavy and it was very tough. People loved it. It was definitely appreciated by a lot of the artists more so than the fans. There was a time where we could joke about how all dungeon synth fans end up turning into dungeon synth artists, but now I feel it’s kind of like… No, not really? There are a lot of people that just put it on in the background for a tabletop game or they’ll just put it on in the background to study or do homework or something and it’s just become that essential for so many people. But yeah, there are so many artists from that period that I wish would be brought up again. Some of those artists haven’t released anything in a while and some of those artists have released things pretty recently. It all just depends on where they’re all at currently.
RT: Yeah, I recently got my home sound system hooked up again after moving into a new apartment and I’ve been buying a lot more stuff on physical mediums now that I have somewhere to listen to it. I snagged a tape for Reclaiming the Spectral Dawn almost the second I saw they went on sale. But I just kind of put it on whenever I’m cooking or whenever I’m doing something in the living room that background music wouldn’t be a hindrance to. At some point both of my housemates have each come downstairs and said “This is nice! This is kind of pleasant!” One of them described it as being “good sitting music,” so that’s become the household term for it now. I’ll tell them “I’m going to put on some sitting music.”
Vaelastrasz: That’s the thing, it’s great background music to put on and I think that’s ended up being a huge part of the appeal of dungeon synth in general. And that’s not to say that people are going into the genre just to make background music. It is a very conceptually heavy genre with a lot of storytelling and a lot of pure atmosphere and vibes, but at the same time, it just kind of ends up being that way. Which honestly is pretty fine. A lot of people, especially around the time of the pandemic—which is kind of when dungeon started blowing up much, much more—the pandemic really helped out a lot in terms of exposing a lot of these really great artists. People were isolated and stuck in their homes for long periods of time and I think dungeon synth and dark ambient music is the kind of stuff that people will gravitate towards when they’re looking for something to listen to while in those isolated and dark times. The momentum since then has done nothing but go up. So going back to trends and projections, who knows? Maybe we will see a festival headlining spot for an artist! The future is weird when it comes to dungeon synth. I’ll say that much.
RT: Yeah, I feel like dungeon synth’s whole history is pretty weird.
Vaelastrasz: It is weird!
RT: It’s so interesting to watch—and I’m still fairly new to dungeon synth, and I’m certainly new to digging into its lore and its history and all of that—but it’s really interesting to watch the history of this genre that I love get pieced together in real time. We still don’t fully understand exactly where it came from. There’s so much of it that, because it wasn’t online in the ’90s and was just traded through tapes, we don’t have a great record of. Every now and then on the dungeon synth subreddit, somebody will post something and say “Hey, this is something I made in college back in 1989 and I’ve been told that it’s dungeon synth. I uploaded it to YouTube. Here’s a link.” We used to say that it comes from Varg’s prison albums and from some of the more ambient bits of Filosofem, but then you’ve got people who say it evolved out of the Berlin School and Jim Kirkwood and all of these other early guys. The impression that I’ve kind of been left with is that it’s this thing that a lot of different people started making totally independent of each other. And I think there’s probably an argument to be made that each of these people are probably inspired by something different. I think Varg listed Tangerine Dream as an influence and as much I’m sure the internet hates to hear it, I’m sure that there were guys who really were just inspired by video game music. I’m sure that there were guys back in the ’90s who were like “Yeah, I want to make something that kind of feels like A Link to the Past” or whatever. It’s so fascinating to watch the history of this genre get pieced together. Like you said, there was the big explosion in its popularity during the pandemic and it’s been really interesting to see how many people have brought their own unique takes into dungeon synth and say “This is my approach to it.” And for the most part it feels like “Yeah, you’re right, nobody really has that sound yet,” so I feel like there’s still a lot of room for growth and experimentation. I’m kind of answering my own question at this point but I also have no idea how big this is going to get or where it’s going to go. But to me as a dungeon synth fan, that’s so exciting.
Vaelastrasz: For me as a dungeon synth artist, it’s so exciting! I’m privileged to have gotten a lot of the love and admiration over the past few years because of how much this genre has blown up, as have a lot of my peers and my friends within the community. It’s been very rewarding and very exciting for all of us to come up together. That’s something that no one can take away. This is the one music scene where I’ve really felt like I’ve been surrounded by a family. And it’s hard! In many ways it kind of feels like a cult. (Laughs) You’re just kind of stuck in this and start thinking “I can do this forever! Let’s all live in a commune!” But really, it does feel like family and I love it. As for the history of dungeon synth, I agree, it’s really weird. My friend Jordan—the former owner of Ancient Meadow Records—he’s doing a book on the history of dungeon synth that’s coming out pretty soon and that’s going to be really great. He’s a real hardcore nerd and I know he’s going to tell a good story of what the history of dungeon synth really is. And you’re right, there are so many routes that you can go back to. You can go back to the Berlin School, you can go back to the prog electronic guys of the ’70s like Tangerine Dream and Krause Schulze, you can go to new age music in the ’80s, you can go to the neoclassical guys in the ’80s like Dead Can Dance, what have you. There are so many little pinpoints that kind of melted into what ended up coming out in the ’90s. You’ve got Varg’s ambient material, you have Jim Kirkwood, you have Mortiis, the French Black Legion, Summoning, Depressive Silence, Paysage d’Hiver’s ’90s material, there’s so many ways that you can go about it because even back in the ’90s, everyone was doing a little bit of a different thing when it came to the dark ambient/dungeon ambient music/ambient black metal music, whatever you wanted to call it, because dungeon wasn’t really a thing in that era yet, you know?
RT: What’s always been fun to me is that none of these guys who were making dungeon synth knew that they were making dungeon synth.
Vaelastrasz: Exactly. And then there’s that dry period in the early 2000s where no one except, like, Uruk-Hai and a bunch of random acts who would show up here and there were making this stuff. There might be an ambient release from Vinterriket. There might be an ambient release from Paysage d’Hiver, but that’s about it. So the 2000s was a barren period except for a few artists and then the 2010s come and Bandcamp is this fresh, new thing. Then you have a lot of these earlier guys like Erang and Lord Lovidicus who were like “We’re bringing this type of shit back. Hope you all enjoy it.” And everyone fucks with it! It’s great. It’s awesome that it just kept on going after that. That’s a weird, tiny, abridged version of the history and leaves so many little unaddressed pinpoints here and there, but it’s interesting when you look back on how young the genre is. The term of the genre is even younger!
RT: Wasn’t it only like 2011 or 2012 or something that the term “dungeon synth” got coined?
Vaelastrasz: Yeah, exactly! I’m glad that there are things being written about dungeon synth that will showcase just how weird and bizarre this whole thing is. And the way that it’s become as popular as it is now… I don’t think anyone would have guessed it. I don’t think anyone from back when I was first getting into this would have guessed how big it would become. It’s insane.
RT: I got into it back in December of 2022. I’d heard mentions of dungeon synth and I knew it was associated with black metal and knew that my metalhead friends dug some dungeon synth on the side, but December 2022 was when I first decided to really check it out. I started with artists like Fief and Thangorodrim and all those guys before really diving in. It’s crazy because I still feel brand new to it. What’s even crazier is the number of people who got here even after I did. It’s incredible! There’s so many people who like this now! And I think it’s fair to say that from a numbers perspective it’s still a very underground thing, but certainly not like it used to be. And again, I speak as someone who’s still a part of this new generation of dungeon synth fans who just got here. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, but I do often find myself surprised by how approachable people find the genre. I’m surprised by how many people I’ve played it for who tell me that they kind of like it. I’ve even had friends who make electronic music who will send me a track and say “Hey, what do you think of this?” And I’m like “I think you just made dungeon synth and don’t know it.” I can think of at least twice that that’s happened. They’ll send it to me and say “I don’t really know what genre to call this,” and I’ll say “Boy have I got a way to spend money on tapes for you!”
Vaelastrasz: “Boy, have I got the genre description for you!” But I understand what you’re saying. I still feel relatively new. I remember going into NEDS 2019. I was 22 at the time and I still felt like the weird, fresh baby in the music scene. It just didn’t really feel right. And I still feel that way even though I talk to artists and fans. It feels like they’re all in their early 20s. Like, what the fuck? You’re even more of a baby than I am? That doesn’t make any sense!
RT: Not to fulfill the stereotype of every dungeon synth fan thinking that they can do it, but it is something that I’ve thought about trying. What’s some advice that you would give to somebody who doesn’t have any real experience playing keyboards but is interested in getting into dungeon synth? Whether that be just personal advice or recommendations for software or equipment or anything like that.
Vaelastrasz: I can’t recommend software or equipment because I think everyone just has their own way of doing it with keyboards and synths. So buy a keyboard and just start fucking wailing at it. The more you wail at it, the more you start to perfect it. And then that’s when you should start really, properly recording. Not only that, but dungeon synth is very much a genre that rewards aesthetics above anything else.
RT: Definitely. You shop with your eyes a lot before you shop with your ears.
Vaelastrasz: Exactly, exactly. It definitely rewards aesthetics. That will hook a lot of people in if you want to break through. Make sure you’ve got good cover art. And if you can’t afford a commission from an artist, which is always preferred, there’s nothing wrong with going back to the well of royalty-free paintings or sketches. Everyone loves Gustave Doré. You can’t do any wrong with Doré. But of course there will always be the guy who’s like “You’re gonna do another Gustav Doré sketch? We’ve seen this a million times!” If Gustav Doré came back to life, it’d be like that one Doctor Who episode where Vincent Van Gogh goes to the modern day and sees his paintings being celebrated. Like, show Gustav Doré Bandcamp and the dungeon synth tag and all of his fucking sketches in this little genre. I don’t know what his reaction would be. Maybe he’d start crying like Vincent did, but who knows?
RT: He sees it, goes back in time, and decides to kill himself like Van Gogh. (Laughs)
Vaelastrasz: He’s like “I gotta end it! This is what my art’s become? This is what it’s been reduced to? A vanity project for some guy’s dark ambient projects?” (Laughs) But in all seriousness, yeah, work on aesthetics, get a keyboard, start playing with it, and when you’re able to refine your keyboard skills and synth skills and feel comfortable enough saying “This is it,” go for it. It’s all intuition as well. You can’t just shit out a 10 minute demo of random keyboard ambient noises and then put it on Bandcamp and expect people to buy it like hotcakes. You really have to refine it. You’ve really gotta put some effort into it, just like with any type of art or any music genre. Don’t even think about hardware and whatnot. If you feel comfortable with MIDIs and DAWs and all that stuff, then go ahead. Get some VST plugins and go at it. If you’re like me and just want to rawdog it with an actual keyboard and want to get some pedals and keep going at it like that, then you can do that as well. You can’t do any wrong with buying keyboards or synths or anything. As long as you have the right mindset for it when it comes to actual songwriting and composition skills, then you should be set and safe!
RT: I feel like that was the perfect bookend for this! Thank you so much for doing this, it’s been a lot of fun!
Vaelastrasz: Yeah, thank you so much! This was a fun conversation! Thank you for spending a Saturday morning doing this interview.
RT: Yeah, you’re welcome, thank you! Is there anything you want to plug before it’s over?
Vaelastrasz: I’ll be at Great Lakes Dungeon Siege in Fort Wayne, Indiana from October 18th to the 20th. I’m playing a show in Chicago at Cole’s Bar on October 22nd with Sadness and Ardente. That one will be a lot of fun. This’ll be Sadness’ second live show ever. There’ll also be a local show in DC on November 11th with God Is War, so that’ll be a great time too.
RT: Awesome! Thanks again for doing this!
Vaelastrasz: Yeah, much love! And don’t forget: Hail Vael.
