“I’m grateful that the dungeon synth fans are largely hostile to ideology creeping into the music,” he says, noting that such views reject one of dungeon synth’s “primary tenets”, as it “breaks the whole escapist function of the music”.
“Dungeon synth is still, at its core, ambient music, so the theatrics make it more engaging for the audience,” he says, adding that the music is intended to put the listener on a “hero’s journey”, providing them with a fantasy escape.
It resulted in Dark Dungeon Music: The Unlikely Story of Dungeon Synth, published earlier this year, which Whiteman is promoting at the festival.
At the festival, held at the New Cross Inn in south London, the German duo Depressive Silence – stalwarts of the 90s dungeon synth scene – wear dark cloaks while dramatically swinging metal incense burners to the imposing thump of drums.
After leaving his band Emperor in the early 90s, he wove together black metal’s morbid sentiments, the facial prosthetics inspired by heavy metal rockers and imagery from fantasy novels to construct his own solo project, describing it as “dark dungeon music”.
