A couple weeks ago I had someone comment on a post about dungeon synth, and whether I was familiar with it. I’d heard the term, but was not familiar with it. I imagined it to be some friends in a partially finished basement playing D&D and listening to 8-bit electronic music. Like the music you’d hear in the cave section of Super Castlevania or something. The same commenter then mentioned an artist called Covered Bridges and their album The Aurora. They said this artist was more of the ‘comfy synth’ genre. Again, I’m drawing a blank as I’ve never heard of either the artist or the genre, but ‘comfy synth’ sounds like something I would like.
I ended up doing a search and found Covered Bridges Bandcamp page and gave the album The Aurora a listen. After the 3rd song I hit buy now on the vinyl. I was hooked.
Before I get into this incredible album, let me talk a moment about ‘comfy synth’. The name brings to mind someone in flannel pajamas tinkering on a tiny synthesizer with a steaming cup of hot cocoa next to a plate with warm cookies on it. Maybe a snickerdoodle candle burning in the living room and an Irish Setter name Lazarus lying next to a fireplace. It’s always sunrise or sunset outside, which is in some green valley with breezy trees and a river nearby.
Turns out that’s not too far from the truth.
The genre is an offshoot of dungeon synth which came out of the black metal scene. Comfy synth emerged during the early days of the pandemic, a coping mechanism to keep the musician and I suppose those that found their tiny, lo-fi idyllic recordings, calm in the face of the world possibly collapsing before their very eyes. Not to be confused with prariecore, warmcore, or goblincore, comfy synth painted visions of woodland creatures, cabins in the forest, and overall a simplistic view of living. Renaissance fairs, lutes, gathering berries by the river, etc…Simple electronic music that evokes peace and solitude.
I mean, electronic music that elicits peace and meditation through nature and a little light fantasy? Sign me up.
There’s also an element of dreams and memories. Like finding a photo album in a closet at your parents house, but it’s a closet that never existed before and the photos are of moments you can’t recall ever happening. Yet there you are, standing on a pier in a lake that is completely unfamiliar to you as your grandmother smiles on next to you.
This is escapism music at its finest. The kind of music that puts you into some other realm where the world isn’t crumbling and in-fighting no longer exists.
Covered Bridges is in the world of comfy synth. The album The Aurora which I picked up feels less about walks in forests and picking berries with your wilderness friends, and more about a meditation on life itself. There’s minor key turns in the songs; melodic shifts that take the songs in melancholy directions. I’m reminded of a band like Midlake, the Denton-based rock band that gave us the masterpiece The Trials Of Van Occupanther. That album felt like music pulled from some alternate dimension. A rock album for sure, but slight synth touches that made the songs feel fantastical, ethereal in some way. 70s-style synth sounds interspersed with flutes and 12-string guitars that turned the music into something you’d imagine hearing echoing through some Medieval forest, but in an alternate reality. Bamnan and Slivercork, Midlake’s first album, also felt that way. But far weirder.
I listened to The Aurora nearly all weekend. Each time I dropped the needle on the all white vinyl I felt transported. Slow, lo-fi beats emanated from the speakers as keyboards built these melancholy minuets that elicited both some lost, bygone time as well as something that felt not quite of this earth. An alien reinterpretation of woodland, baroque music. Something you’d hear echoing in some long forgotten forest in a dream. Melodies that you’d still hear at a distance as you woke from that dream. It’d remain in your head long afterwards and it would randomly pop up and you’d wonder where you heard it before.
Album opener “Imbolc” really does sum up the world of Covered Bridges. Slow rhythm, piano melody, and atmospheric touches in the background all come together into this dreamy, woozy sound that has the feel of waking from surgery and still hovering between reality and the ether of sleep. “Paper Cloud” sounds like a childrens lullaby from some far away time. You can almost hear a crackling fire in the background, and this would sound lovely played on a harpsichord.
There’s the dreamy waltz of “Hand to God(The Macabre Waltz)”, complete with eerie whistles in the refrain. “Weeping Mourning” hangs in the air like smoke from a pipe, while title track “The Aurora” is carried along in Gothic beauty thanks to 12-string acoustic and almost ghostly atmosphere. “Broken Rainbow Crayon” closes our journey with The Aurora as if on some horse-drawn cart making its way out of the forest and to the expanse of the universe.
During the time we were deep into the pandemic, isolation, and the fear things would only get worse I found solace in music. In-particular lots of electronic music made via modular and analog. Deep diving into artists like Tangerine Dream, Proto Droids, Polypores, as well as labels like Spun Out Of Control, Behind The Sky, Holodeck Records, El Paraiso Records, and Azure Vista Records. These artists and labels offered me some peace and much needed distraction when there were so many unknowns. I think if I’d had something like Covered Bridges to get lost in I would have taken that plunge and been all the happier for it.
Lucky for me, there’s always something to worry about so Covered Bridges’ The Aurora will find a very comfortable spot in my head to reside. And thanks to a stranger commenting on one of my posts I’ve got a whole other microgenre to explore.
Complex Distractions 