Back in the late 2010s I wrote a bit for RVK On Stage, a cool English-language magazine focused on the Icelandic music scene. Alas, the print version only lasted four issues, and while the website hung around for a while after that, when I tried the url earlier today my browser flashed all kinds of […]
Month: April 2026
Teenage Jesus And The Jerks – “Teenage Jesus And The Jerks” (1979 / 2024)
I just finished reading Adele Bertei’s No New York, a memoir of her time in the No Wave scene in the late 70s and into the early 80s. She was a keyboardist for The Contortions, and though she left the band prior to the recording of their debut album Buy, she did perform on the […]
Mötley Crüe – “Shout At The Devil” (1983)
I know there are a lot of people who don’t like blogs or reviews that contain a heavy dose of the writer’s personal experience. I get it – sometimes you just want the information. But Life In The Vinyl Lane is as much about my relationship to music as it is about the music itself. […]
Kobold – “The Valley Of The Forgotten Secrets” (2018 / 2025)
This is another of the dungeon synth releases on the HDK label I brought back from our recent trip to Portland. Some of Kobold’s releases are tagged on Discogs as chiptune in addition to dungeon synth. I’m not sure I’d go that far. There is definitely a lo-fi-ish component to the songs – and not […]
Gnoll – “Music For Dungeons” (2018 / 2023)
The Italian label Heimat Der Katastrophe (HDK) is well-known in the dungeon synth world for the quality of their releases and their overall aesthetic. In recent years the HDK logo has become a mark of distinction and they’ve gotten more and more creative in their design. One such example is their Dungeon Nostalgie series of […]