Style: dungeon synth
Primary Emotions/Themes: communion with nature
Thoughts: Dungeon synth has far and away become one of my favorite genres in the past few years. I can think of very few genres that match the scope, subject matter, and emotional diversity of the genre. It ranges from the simplest of stories to grand epic tales. Vast forests to the smallest of cave. Ancient civilizations to dinosaurs. It does truly seem endless.
Örnatorpet's debut album is decidedly more on the "old school" end of the spectrum. Utilizing obvious synthesizers in simple repeating melodies evoking an overall epic feel. Bergtagen is what I would call classic dungeon synth. With that annotation there is a lot of potential that the album is unremarkable. Fortunately the album is anything but.
As with all good dungeon synth, the music is repetitive but not in a way that it detracts from the music. In fact it's this very repetition that gives the music its character. Small melodies slowly swirl around my speakers as they have micro variations from one measure to another.
Was that melody slightly different than the last time it played? Was the timing a bit different? Did the instrumentation change? All these questions come to mind as the music plays. Some songs revolve around a single melody, yet others revolve around a single theme. The music goes where it will and it simply draws me along with it as Bergtagen takes me along its melodious paths.
Dungeon synth is indeed a fantastic genre, and Örnatorpet is one of the better artists making music in the classic stylings of the genre. It's amusing to me because when I first heard the artist I did not care for the music in the slightest. As I've matured in my tastes I find that I prefer this style of dungeon synth over a lot of the genre that has a more expansive scope. It's a quaint little album, and one that I find myself revisiting more often than I ever thought I would.
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