In this blog entry I am going to discuss an interesting type of ambient music I recently learned about; being Dungeon Synth.
I learned about it about two months ago— I draw lots of retro-styled dark fantasy art, and someone mentioned that one of my pieces looked like it would go really well with a specific dungeon synth. I looked it up, and it’s basically ambient music made primarily on a synthesizer to evoke fantasy settings; most often the atmosphere of an ancient dungeon or crypt. I’ve not listened to it too much, but most of it reminds me of an 8-bit video game soundtrack, but often slower paced and eerier. The lack of budget typically shows in the quality, but in a charming way. According to a YouTube video essay on the subject (https://youtu.be/DG6Svb0f_sM), it has origins that can loosely be traced back to random Scandinavian black metal artists getting experimental with their sound, along with a few other disparate sources. What is called dungeon synth now may be an instance of convergent evolution from different origins. Nowadays it seems like it’s most commonly found on Bandcamp and YouTube, usually produced by one person or so. It’s quite neat; I’d probably use it if I played Dungeons and Dragons.
Another interesting thing about it is that it sort of seems to have broken into the mainstream with the influx of AI imagery on the internet. People have known for a while now that AI is uncannily good at creating dark fantasy imagery for some reason; likely due to the vast amount of sources available from decades of actual art and because AI’s imperfections might subtly enhance the eerie vibe of the imagery. Anyway, a trend emerged on TikTok to post a montage of dark fantasy imagery (unfortunately usually AI generated) accompanied by a specific eerie synth backing track. This trend occurred before I knew what dungeon synth was specifically, but the vibe of that backing track was very in line with dungeon synth. Here it is: https://youtu.be/8Bgl6HpCU3I.
Let me know if you have any questions or experience with dungeon synth. I am new to it, but it fascinates me greatly. Thanks for reading!
P.S. if you’d like to see the medieval fantasy art that sparked the discussion about this, check out my instagram, @sabretooth1100.
Dungeon Synth
