Once again I find myself drawn to the music of Chaucerian Myth. His original releases from the second half of the 2010s are long-since sold out and often command fairly healthy prices on the secondary market. That is, of course, if you can find them. Fortunately our friends at the Out Of Season and Fogged Entity labels have deemed some of them worthy of reissue, often in wonderful new packaging, and I’ve been jumping on these as soon as the are announced. Which is how I come to find myself sitting in my living room on one of the first (finally) warm days of summer in Seattle, hitting ‘play’ on the old Denon cassette deck rigged up to my stereo.
Chaucerian Myth’s music falls firmly into the dungeon synth (DS) genre, one which I find myself paying more and more attention to. I’m following at least three groups on Facebook (two of which have over 9,000 members each, though I suspect there is considerable overlap…), plus various individual artists and hashtags there and on Instagram, I have read both books on the genre (a third is expected later this year…), and have a complete run of Dungeon Synth Zine (issue #10 coming soon!). I’m not sure it has reached the level of an obsession, but I probably spend more time thinking about it than is healthy.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of DS is that fans take it both incredibly seriously, and also not seriously at all. People will crack wise about how nerdy it can all be, there are memes about the adherents’ love of Dr. Pepper, and a lot of free download codes are shared. But if you bring up the topic of AI art being used on releases, or worse yet any AI involvement in the creation of the music, be ready, because folks will pick up their torches and pitchforks and begin to march. Which is fair – after all, DS as a genre has always been defined by a certain simplicity and DIY ethic, both sonically and in cover art design. But that also means it has a low bar to entry, and the significant increase in interest and releases comes with a certain amount of growing pain. Don’t get me wrong – it’s still highly niche. But there does seem to be an interest in maintaining its integrity for as long as possible, though some of the original heads would say it has already jumped the shark.
ANYWAY… one of the things I do enjoy about DS is the attention to detail that goes into so many releases. These are often one-person projects, so a lot of the artist is poured into each release. Often “extras” are included in the packaging – I remember once ordering a CDr directly from a performer and while the label on the CDr was hand-written, it also came with a small metal charm on a length of cord tied around it, which was a fun touch. Fogged Entity took that a step further with this release, offering a version that packaged the two cassettes in a custom wood box including two buttons (badges to my non-American friends), a number of insert cards providing context for these historical stories, and some cool block print designs. Only 10 copies were produced in this format, while the component parts were also available in editions of 100 for each of the two cassettes. They sold out almost immediately, though you can still buy the downloads of each directly from Chaucerian Myth’s Bandcamp page HERE.
Troilus And Criseyde was originally released in 2017 and it’s beautiful in its simplicity. Chaucerian Myth leverages a wide range of instrumental sounds that feel historically appropriate to those that would have been played in Chaucer’s own time, playing them both individually and at times symphonically. I’m impressed by his composition skills, something I’ve struggled with in my own music. 2020s Sir Orfeo shows continued progression, Chaucerian Myth’s blending of instrumentation even more seamless and integrated, though arguable it also is a bit less “period-sounding” than Troilus And Criseyde, feeling more contemporary if not in arrangement, than in sonics. However, the all-too-brief “Orfeo Charms The Animals” is stunning in its ability to transcend time and make me feel like I’m walking through a village in the 1500s.