Compendium - Ensemble MCMLXCV

 

Greetings, again. After over a year of inactivity, I've come back with quite the stash of obscure music to share once again. My ripping equipment is in working condition again, so I've been able to get quite a lot digitalized. Still a handful of tapes to go, but everything I have is currently uploaded and is awaiting a write-up, so I don't have a whole lot of excuse for delay now. Many people have emailed pointing out that a good portion of old download links are dead. I've moved everything to google drive which should stay up for a long time. I've also swapped out the Ashmadai rip with the cut-off final track to a new rip from a friend of mine. I played with the mix a bit so it's not so panned to the right and a bit louder. It was still a low mix tape to begin with, but hopefully this makes it a little brighter. Anyway, please enjoy any old stuff you've missed out on due to inactive links. I think the majority of my rips have been uploaded to youtube, as well. I'm sure posts ahead will make their way over eventually. Glad to be back!

I wanted to bring this tape up first thing coming off of my hiatus since it may be my favorite tape so far on this blog. Compendium's Ensemble MCMLXCV comes from the legendary Dark Age Productions, released in 1995 during the label's heyday. Ensemble MCMLXCV is lovely EP/mini-album of six tracks making a total of around 20 minutes. I should note that this tape isn't entirely dungeon synth proper. There's a strong element of gothic/neoclassical piano for the bulk of the tape but keyboards, acoustic guitar, cello, and other instruments are woven in to create a very lush and dark romantic atmosphere. I'm a pretty big fan of this kind of atmosphere relating to neoclassical darkwave, so fans of the genre will surely love this. The music is largely instrumental, though the first and last track feature very beautiful female vocal harmonies. If you're not into the whole gothic piano piano thing as much, old-school dungeon synth fans will get their cheesy synth thirst slaked with the synth panflute on the track "The Falls of Caledonia" and the baroque synth harpsichord on "The Dark Enlightened". It's hard for me to pick a favorite out of these, but I'm partial to the first track "Dancing in the Mist". In some ways reminds me of the piano solo tracks of Theatre of Tragedy. A very beautiful tape that's worth the time of anyone into darker piano music or dungeon synth.

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