Now, here’s one that I don’t really know much about. Just a few listens, that’s all…
A lot of my entries here have been ones about tracks with artists that I’m familiar with, or have had some history with — either having interactions with the artists or even just being familiar with their work for some period of time. There is also music I’ve discovered in recent times that I have really no clue about the artist and therefore really take the music at face value. This is especially the case for for artists working in genres that naturally have a bit of mystery to them, and my discovery of their work comes about by modern methods of doing so, whether that be online searches, automated recommendations and so on.
Such is the case for some newer artists I’ve been uncovering to that are all connected together under a genre umbrella called dungeon synth, which is a relatively niche microgenre of electronic music that a definition online states as “a genre of electronic music that merges elements of black metal and dark ambient. The style emerged in the early 1990s, predominantly among members of the early Norwegian black metal scene”.
Over the past couple of decades I have definitely observed more categorisation of what we might called micro-genres and there have been many that have flashed past me during this time — slimepunk, seapunk, eggpunk, barber beats, doom jazz, witch house, nu rave, vaporwave (1), etc. — the latter being one I listen to quite a bit often in the form of mixes.
Like some genres that are by definition somewhat specific, music I’ve heard that’s supposedly in the dungeon synth genre seems to be somewhat broader than it’s described, with a range from a more swampy, reverb-inflected beat-driven style bringing in elements of EBM, techno and even italo to artists in that genre working in far more ambient, drone-based compositions.
But how did I get there? Well, trying out and listening to a lot of “recommended” tracks online based on my already firmly established interest in ambient electronic music, such as artists from the 1980s like Ron Berry, Steve Brenner, Pauline Anna Strom, Michele Musser, Chris Wyman and Mark Shreeve — to name just a few — along with a myriad of newer more recent artists. In general it seems artists working in this style tend to eschew the spotlight, play live rarely, and tend to self-release their music on formats like cassette. This is of course a generalisation, but also these traits seem to present a picture of artists more interested in the “art” elements of music rather than the performative ones.
Listening to tracks in this style I was already familar with, I was curious to seek out some of these recommendations, perhaps due to the elaborate artwork of some of these releases that exercise of pastiche of style that pulls from lofty, surreal airbrushed artwork from fantasy paperback novels from the 1970s and 1980s. Dungeons and Dragons, early role playing games, Choose Your Own Adventure novels… you get the picture.
Ziggurath is one artist I’ve now listened to on a numerous occasions now, whose album titles — Tales From Southern Realms (2022) and True North (2024) — make generous use of misplaced umlauts that bring to mind artists working in heavy metal over the years, from studded belt juggernauts such as Motörhead to the far more satirical, such as Spinal Tap (there seems to be no glyph here that can render the umlaut over the “n” in their name).
What information I know about Ziggurath is basically just pinched here from a short online bio. The project was formed by Mohammed Abdelkazeem, a musician based in Hamburg who arrived in Germany as a refugee in 1992. Earlier in life he had an interest in MS-DOS computer games and an overall general interest in computers. After dropping out of school, he studied music and sound design as an autodidact, becoming a celebrated wunderkind as a sound engineer in the German extreme metal scene of the late 1990s. In more recent years he started Ziggurath as a solo project, pulling influence from fantasy, classic computer game soundtracks and other esoteric influences.
Focusing in on this artist’s latest album True North, which runs a hefty length of one and a half hours, it’s an atmospheric affair for the most part of spare, cold monophonic synth drones, light touches of plucked string instruments, synths reminiscent of mellow brass sounds and lots of environmental field recordings. This lays down the groundwork for spaced out late night listening, along with a few compositions that are a bit more rhythmic in nature, often pulling from music that has a medieval feel. Knowing the artist’s influences — just by the visual presentation and the way tracks are named alone — I can almost visualize some early RPG computer game, wandering around a desolate 2-dimensional village, randomly walking into houses of the inhabitants and asking them questions only to get short and cryptic answers.
A track such as “Open The Gates Of Winter” — the fourth on my album — caught my ear. It’s a simple track with a mellow one-key synth drone overlaid with atmospheric rumbling and the sound of dogs barking. One gets the feeling of hiding out in an ruined, snow-covered abbey in wintry hills — the sound of dogs adding some suspense to the track as it implies the atmospheric silence is about to be broken by some unforeseen circumstances.
Overall the full album — at least to me — seems to run as one continuous thematic piece, as if it were a soundtrack to some unknown story that one can use their imagination to fill in the blanks based on the feel they might get from the music, as well as any visual prompts they might get from the artist’s vision as well as stylised cover artwork.
So there you have it: my little ramble here — especially about an artist I’m not that familiar with. There’s a number of others working in this style that I’ve found — like Witchbolt and Witan (album stream below) — and likely many more I’m yet to find out.
- I actually listen to a lot of music in this genre, and it’s definition goes beyond the music itself. It’s probably something I’ll get into more at some point with a Track Of The Day entry but there’s been some coverage by my typing hands already.