Faery Ring is a new Dungeon Synth project hailing from England, which combines strong atmospheres with written fantasy stories. In this review I speak with project mastermind Blackthorn about his inspirations, writing process, and upcoming EP scheduled for a May 1 release.
- Greetings Blackthorn! Thank you for answering this interview with Barbarian Skull. Please provide us with the history of Faery Ring.
Hello, Barbarian Skull! I’d like to start by saying thank you for the opportunity for the interview. I am a big fan of your webzine, and the reviews and interviews you conduct provide great insight.
Faery Ring started, officially, last year in 2015, although I have been dabbling in making dungeon music for a while. When I was a lot younger, I spent hours and hours creating dark MIDI music, unaware of any wider dungeon synth genre. I suppose what I was making was MIDI black metal, which, in retrospect, was awful! But I gained great pleasure in creating the ‘intros’ and ‘outros’, which, of course, are a significant source of inspiration for many dungeon synth acts.
As I got older, I was focused for a long time on black metal, and had a solo project that met with some success. So that became a big focus for me, from a creative perspective. While black metal was, and remains, my primary musical love, dungeon music has always been a part of my consciousness.
So sometime in 2014 I tried my hand at making dungeon synth, reviving some of the old songs I had made and reworking them, and eventually I found an approach I was happy with. After a few life changes, I settled in eventually and decided to formally start a project, and thus began Faery Ring.
- Your first demo “Into Darkening Woodland” was very well received here at Barbarian Skull. You describe the demo as “A journey into an embattled, ancient woodland”, and it also contains a written prose story included in the digital booklet. Can you tell us more about this tale and what inspired you to create it? Do you plan on doing more written concepts for your future releases?
For me, narrative and storytelling has always been a major aspect of my enjoyment of dungeon synth and black metal. The ability of those two genres in particular to create a mental space in which a listener can travel to distant lands, and to different times, is one of the main reasons I am so in love with them. I write fantasy fiction and fairy tales anyway, so it seemed only natural to blend these two avenues of creativity.
The tale behind …Woodland is drawn from a fantasy world I write about, and when working on the music, it seemed so aesthetically reminiscent to me of the lands that I had been describing in those tales, that I made the decision to focus the music around the story. I found it very rewarding on two levels – firstly it is wonderful to create a soundtrack to a fantasy world that I feel I know intimately – and secondly, it creates real direction when working on the music.
I plan to always include written concepts along with Faery Ring’s music. For me, the two go hand in hand. The upcoming album will feature a continuation of the story introduced in …Woodland, and future releases will draw upon the same mythos, but maybe different time periods, or focusing on different peoples within the world.
- While Into Darkening Woodland contains only four tracks, the songs are diverse in atmosphere, from powerful and triumphant to brooding and melancholic. On your Facebook page you’ve listed a great variety of influences, from classic Dungeon Synth (Mortiis, Gothmog) to modern day artists (Arath, Skarpseian). What music outside of the genre has influenced Faery Ring (if any)? Do you get inspiration from any other sources outside of music?
I think it would be very difficult to not allow a whole host of other influences to play a part in the creation of music.
Returning to an earlier point, old black metal ‘intros’ and ‘outros’ are a key influence – the anticipation one feels when pressing play on a black metal album to hear the intro, brooding and ominous, is incredible, and is something I wish to capture in my music. And black metal in general is, obviously, a sister of dungeon synth, so has a significant influence.
Power metal is another big love of mine, and although musically it has only a little bearing on Faery Ring’s music, the inspiration it provides is significant in terms of storytelling and scope.
Folk music, and neofolk, to a degree, is an important influence, and certainly is drawn upon more in the upcoming album. I like a lot of pagan and heathen folk, and traditional folk is often very beautiful too.
I also like a lot of ‘spiritual’ or ‘ethereal’ music, or music that is very much of a certain time and space. There are some wonderful projects that are very focused on specific geographic locations, and the ability to elicit the experience of a place, or to describe it in such a rich, visceral way to those who haven’t visited it, is a major influence. I think that is what dungeon synth aims to do, in a sense, only it elicits experiences of fantasy realms or different times. Black metal is also very much a lens into other places and times.
Film and video game soundtracks are well documented as a source of inspiration for many dungeon synth artists, and certainly they play a part in Faery Ring. Again, not so much compositionally, but certainly in the sense that they provide music that facilitates escapism.
And of course, reading, writing, walking all play a big role in providing inspiration.
- The various layers of instruments and song progression in your music is very well done. Can you tell us more about your composition process and how you come up with ideas for songs? How much of a role did the story behind each song have on the direction of the songs on Into Darkening Woodland?
Initially, it is the atmosphere I wish to present in the song, or the mood. Even if I haven’t figured out the narrative behind it, I will have a vague idea of what sort of direction I want the song to go in, such as whether it is a song of journeying, a song of triumph, sadness, mourning, and so forth.
I’ll always start with a simple melody, or chord progression. Sometimes it will be something that comes into my head during the day, that I will record and work on at a later time. Once I have that on tape, I will loop it round and round and work on different layers to go with it. Sometimes I have disparate ideas that I will weave together. A lot of times, little melodies and sections get discarded along the way, or saved for another song.
Other times, I will improvise, straight to tape, over a chord progression. I think, especially in dungeon synth, that that spontaneity can often lead to some wonderful mistakes. Speaking of mistakes, I don’t edit too much, or replay a missed note, unless it sounds dreadful and will draw a listener out of the atmosphere. I think somewhere along the line amateurish playing, a certain shambolic quality, has become a trope of the genre and adds something to it. I am not sure why, and have pondered this for a long while. My partial theory is that it is because it is reminiscent of old ‘pulp’ fantasy / sword and sorcery movies, a kind of quaint charm.
I usually let a song sit for a while, then re-listen to it and finish it all up, add in little flourishes, work a bit on the production, listen to it on different sound systems to make sure it works.
I use a MIDI keyboard, and a whole range of VSTs, on an old dusty windows computer.
- Faery Ring is described as “English Dungeon Synth”, a cool and interesting note considering that I haven’t come across any other Dungeon Synth projects that identify their project with nationality, although many projects (especially Russian Dungeon Synth artists such as Kashmar) are very inspired by culture. Are you simply aiming to represent your country with the label, or does “English Dungeon Synth” have a special meaning to you?
I’m not particularly interested in representing my country in any kind of ‘national pride’ sense. I just think that England has a beautiful, mystical and magickal, literary and romantic past, and I try to capture a bit of that in the music.
I think in particular, the landscape that surrounds me everyday is a big influence. I live in the countryside, in what would probably be described as a ‘quintessential’ english village in the country. There is a deep magick to the countryside, that I feel every time I walk out of my door, and I try to channel that into Faery Ring.
For me, Faery Ring is my attempt to capture, in music, the atmosphere of the lambent fields in springtime, the puddles, and the moss growing on old country walls, the crumbling churches and the miles and miles of hedgerows and bramble. England has wonderful folklore that is very inspiring to me.
Dungeon synth, and black metal (despite its ties with racism and nationalism) have always been a very multicultural experience for me. They are, as I hinted at earlier, very much of a certain time and place, a modern folklore, if you will. There is such cultural variety in those genres, and it is simply amazing to experience the beauty from many different places that others have captured and translated into music.
- As I mentioned in my review Into Darkening Woodland, the unique promo photos add a mystical and otherworldly feeling to the demo booklet. How big of a role do the aesthetics of Dungeon Synth play in Faery Ring?
Aesthetic is very important. I have always loved the enigma of dungeon synth, the anonymity, the timelessness. Obviously Mortiis, as a progenitor, made great use of aesthetic, imagery and story, and I am just carrying on that tradition, as are many other wonderful dungeon synth artists.
The black and white decaying images, the crumbling castles, the moaning wind, the howling forests and the dank dungeons, are all so present in the music of dungeon synth as well as the imagery. They are inseparable, in my mind.
I have tried to take a slightly different route, whilst recognising and paying homage to the old imagery. I’m very interested in the way dungeon synth musicians choose to present themselves, as artists, if at all. And as the music of dungeon synth is so visually and psychically inspiring, I thought it would be a nice touch to share some of the imagery that has been inspiring in the creation of the music.
- You have announced that a new EP titled “A Kingdom Beset by Despair” will be released this Beltane. What can you tell us about the upcoming EP? What can fans of the demo expect from the release?
The EP has eight tracks, and is bigger in scope than the demo. Both musically and from a narrative perspective. I have tried to refine some of the areas I felt needed improvement from the demo, and I have used a wider range of sounds and styles.
Story-wise, the EP deals with events directly after those told about in the demo. The Trolls, mourning the loss of their King, strike back with great hatred and vengeance against the Fey Queen and her peoples. It is a very tragic story for the Fey, but triumphant for the Trolls!
Musically, and emotionally, it deals with triumph, deception, travel, battle and mourning. So there are big, bold brassy sections, sombre reflective pieces, dreary passages, victorious strings, mournful organ. I have made a small use of more overt ‘synth’ sounds in some of the pieces, too.
- Thanks again for taking the time to answer this interview Blackthorn! Any last words are yours.
Thank you for the very interesting interview opportunity and the interest in Faery Ring.
Dungeon synth is at a very fascinating point at the moment, there are some wonderful acts out there, many reviewed on Barbarian Skull. I would like to highlight, in particular, the music of Trogool, Skarpseian and Murgrind, as being truly representative of contemporary dungeon synth. But there are many, many others.
Also, those who are working to archive, share and commentate on dungeon synth – yourself at Barbarian Skull webzine, Deivlforst records, the dungeon synth blogspot, the dungeon synth tumblr, the many visual artists working on designs, the people on social media who are seeking out old treasures and sharing them. Long may it continue!
Thanks, Blackthorn
