Fogweaver - Magelight

[Redd Panderson]

Fogweaver's album Magelight has, to my ears anyway, a somewhat Boardsian melodicism and ghostliness going for it in a good way. The track "Patterning Spell" is a good example; I like to think of Boards of Canada's strong melodies as audio sigils, and this track evokes that nicely.

I discovered this artist at some point in the past 3 years while dipping into the "dungeon synth" subgenre. As a genre, plenty of it is too generic IMHO (and there are some problematic actors I steer clear of--you can look that up yourself if it concerns you), but some of it is a delight. Fogweaver seems to be good people. I also enjoy the artists Umbría, Moth Tower, and Book of Skelos.

As a genre, dungeon synth is kinda interesting in that its practice of pulling on threads within the objects of its nostalgia--things like old fantasy computer games from the late 80s, early-mid 90s, and so on--has really been ongoing unbroken since the objects themselves were originally created. Some of the folks working in this idiom started in the 90s and never really stopped. It just seems that in the wake of Boards of Canada, their influence on music culture, and things like vaporwave, dungeon synth has seen quite the renaissance in the past 5ish years.