Malfortune Discs is a DIY label based just a few hours down the highway from me, in Portland, Oregon. It first came to my attention with the release of the 12 CDr box set The Chronicle of the Order of the Weeping Willow, a collection of all 14 releases by Order of the Weeping Willow, a mysterious cassette-only dungeon synth label (blogger Kaptain Carbon has a great post about that label HERE). Prior to putting out that retrospective, Malfortune released eight dungeon synth CDrs under its imprint and I’ve been patiently trying to track down as many as I can.
Desolation was Malfortune’s fourth release (all releases are called “curses”, and this one is 4th Curse), and the first I heard. And I have to admit, this was not at all what I was expecting. The opening track, “Lurching”, is a plodding and repetitive keying of bell-like synth. Is this dungeon synth? I’m not trying to gatekeep here, but this would be perhaps more easily labeled as experimental (<– admission: after re-listening, the repetitive, simple major-to-minor chord changes do in fact give off a kind of old school dungeon-like video game sentiment and my appreciation grew). “Barren” takes us into more traditional dungeon synth territory, jettisoning the noisier elements of “Lurching” and focusing on the slightly distorted keys. As “Barren” progresses it adds a layer, and undercurrent of organ-like chords providing a low end foundation for the more expressive and pronounced notes.
The short “Squalor” hits like a noise wall, warbled high-speed vibrations punctuated by metallic bangs like a hammer on metal, a lead-in to “Arid” with its looping, distorted pitch change serving as the sonic bed. Desolate synth keys emerge after about two minutes, reminiscent of black-and-white horror film soundtracks and partly obscured by the unrelenting pitch change that bores a hole into your brain before finally suddenly disappearing just before the six minute mark, giving the synths the opportunity to darken the mood. The closing track “Wastes” brings us back to a more classical dungeon synth sound, coming at you like the soundtrack to a fantasy movie being played on a VHS tape that has been watched a few hundred times and broadcast out of a console TV’s speakers. In other words, it sounds a lot like my bedroom in the late 1980s sometime after Saturday night had just bled into Sunday, the lights out and only the flickering glow of the TV illuminating the foot of my bed. It’s incredibly compelling.
I don’t know of any place you can listen to this online, nor purchase it. I suspect you’ll need to keep your eyes open on Discogs or eBay to find a copy.