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Australia’s Quest Master soundtrack your RPG fantasies at the Empty Bottle

Posted 07/02/2025

Step into the pixelated mists of Quest Master. Australian dungeon-synth artist Lord Gordith (better known among punks as Gordo Blackers of Steröid) launched Quest Master onto the scene in 2017 with a double cassette titled Lost Songs of Distant Realms, which uses Yamaha and Casio keyboards to evoke nostalgia for 90s RPGs and their epic journeys and battles in eight-bit worlds populated by knights and dragons. The release became a sensation among chiptune appreciators and fantasy enthusiasts, and in 2019 it was reissued on CD and vinyl by Out of Season—one of the first American labels to concentrate on dungeon synth.

Quest Master’s sound has since matured past this imaginative but faithful homage to early quest-based home video games: The lush, complicated soundscapes on 2023’s Sword & Circuitry (Out of Season) have a chintzy, emotive quality that recalls the ambience of Twin Peaks while maintaining a distinct energy and narrative propulsion. Despite flourishes of 80s synth-pop and wriggling earworms from The X-Files soundtrack, these ethereal, vibrant, densely layered songs are unmistakably modern.

At a cultural moment when it’s easier than ever to find a Dungeons & Dragons or Magic: The Gathering game in Chicago (the Empty Bottle, where Quest Master stops on this tour, has hosted a few of both), dungeon synth has found a warm welcome in the city’s rich electronic-music and noise scene. At this show, Quest Master will cap a bill full of artists on the cutting edge of the fantasy sound: Salt Lake City’s Fief (also on Out of Season) bring a folkloric quality to their music, locals Mors Vitaque veer toward the lugubrious and romantic, and Fort Wayne’s Sorrowmoon skew more sinister. The latter two have released music through Great Lakes Dungeon Synth, a regional collective and label that in October threw the first midwest festival for dungeon-synth lovers, the Great Lakes Dungeon Siege, in Fort Wayne

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