I meet Jenn Taiga at a weirdly specific regional tea chain in Squirrel Hill, a neighborhood in the east side of Pittsburgh. I intend to go order for us at the counter, but she informs me that you actually ring a little bell and some college kid in hippie pants comes over and takes your order. That’s a relief; she wants some kind of Chinese Pu’er tea that I can’t pronounce and definitely can’t point to on the menu. I order an iced holy basil tea despite it being cold and rainy outside.
Taiga, for the uninitiated, is a dungeon synth artist who has found a great deal of success in the burgeoning scene, performing across the U.S. with her impressive live synthesizer setup. She also frequently brings a dark performance art flair to her shows, engaging in stuff with knives and needles I probably shouldn’t advertise online for her sake. Trust me, it’s sick as hell to witness.
Over the aforementioned tea, Taiga let me bother her (thanks!) about her path to finding dungeon synth, her current work building a community in Pittsburgh, and some very cool stuff on the horizon.
How did you wind up getting into dungeon synth?
So, I started classical piano when I was seven. And I did that all throughout school, just ’cause, like, that was my thing. I went to a performing arts middle and high school because I got bullied a lot as a kid. I know, shocking. And so that’s where I started studying a lot more stuff. I studied Caribbean percussion, a lot of West African percussion. I learned some, like, traditional Indian music theory. And that’s also where I got into rock ‘n’ roll music, which is where I got into synthesizers. Which is important for the dungeon synth, because without that…
It’s just dungeon.
It’s more like your mom’s basement, you know? So… I was really into that and, like, I love prog. I still do, but I did then too. Big into Rush and Gentle Giant, those cats. So, nerd music, virgin music. I’m being very cool. In my early 20s, I couldn’t find anybody to start a cool bitchin’ prog rock band. I don’t know why. So, I was listening to some synthy shit on the YouTube. We found a video of Klaus Schulze playing Cologne in Germany in 1977. I was like, ‘Oh, this guy can do cool shit. Just by himself. I’m gonna do that.’
I set out to do some, like, Tangerine Dream, German Schulze-y type stuff. But with Dungeons and Dragons, instead of space. It was, like, 11 or so years ago. Pre-transition for me.
So, around, I think, 2018? A buddy of mine from New Hampshire sent me a shitty cell phone video of a band playing in the studio or his basement or some shit like that. He says, ‘Hey, these guys dress up like wizards and play keyboards, too. Y’all should get in touch.’ Group called Sombre Arcane. Phenomenal. Also, very sweet people. Friends of mine now. So I hit them up– ‘Hey, I also dress up like a wizard and play keyboard music. If you want to be friends.’ And they said yeah. And that’s how I learned that there were other people doing that sort of thing. Now I no longer dress up like a wizard, but…
The scene remains.
Imagine 11 years ago. I mean, like, people were recording shit. People were releasing music, here and there-ish. But it wasn’t real live phenomenon. The first Dungeon Siege festival thing, which was a private affair in somebody’s basement, happened in 2018. I’ve been doing this shit live since 2015.
As somebody who knows what things were like then, it’s crazy now, like I’m not playing noise shows and getting kicked out ’cause I’m playing with notes. Opening up for doom metal bands because I said, ‘Hey, do you like Pink Floyd? Imagine that bit bigger. I could do that.‘ Now you can reach out to a venue and be like, ‘I’m touring. I do dungeon synth. I want to play a show here,’ and they’ll agree to it.
Sounds ludicrous to be grateful for that. Especially if you’re coming from, like, a metal or a punk background. But having seen that progression, it wasn’t always this way. And now you’ve got people like fucking Quest Master doing all these big international tours and shit, playing at Hell’s Heroes and stuff. Things are established in a way I don’t think any of us ever really thought it would be.
No, which is really cool to, like, witness. I’m just curious if you have any insights into, like, what you think is driving this scene? Is it because it’s fairly accessible to people? Or do you think there’s also like a renewed interest in fantasy right now? Is there anything that you think makes people attracted to this sort of music?
Well, I want to say, first and foremost, probably, it’s because the music is good.
Banger answer.
And now that people have discovered it, and we’ve hit sort of like a threshold of it being easier to access, because you have lots of labels, you have certain ones that have gotten bigger, and performing it live is a consistent thing now. I do think that there was a big uptick during the COVID lockdown. Because we’ve got a lot of people sad and lonely in their homes. Guess who was making music in their homes while being sad and lonely and pretending that they were like fucking elf wizard or some bullshit.
And so you had a real big boom of that online. And then when people started being able to get out more, people were doing it out more. Now you have artists out there, like Flickers from the Fen, Low Cunning, cats like that who aren’t black metal dickholes doing the whole like, ‘oh, no, we need to keep it kvlt‘ or whatever, too.
And I mentioned Sombre Arcane earlier; they founded the Northeast Dungeon Siege festival. Started in 2018, the first public one was in 2019. And that brought a lot of people out. They are explicitly anti-fascist, which also helps make things more accessible.
Your live setup is very expansive, but I feel like if you are not playing live and you’re just trying to make music in your home, you can do a lot of this with a MIDI keyboard that’s teeny weeny.
There was an artist, and he passed a few years ago. His name was Geo Romaro. His project, Träd, was done on his phone. 100%. So it is so easy to get into genre. Not just because of, like, the technology, but also much of the composition is very minimal. There’s a joke in musical circles of like, ‘oh, no, I’m not being lazy. It’s ambient.’
I know people who have taken, like, shitty $10 fucking Goodwill keyboards, plugged it into a thing and made phenomenal albums out of it. Hedge Wizard, who’s a big dungeon synth artist, from what I recall, some of his first work was that he didn’t know how to plug his keyboard into his computer to record it. So he put a microphone up to the speaker. And you know what? It sounds great. It’s fucking great.
Okay, can you talk a little bit about one of your newer projects, Steel City Dungeon Synth?
The tagline I put for it is ‘curating live music for enjoyers of dungeon synth, dark ambient, and music that goes bump in the night.’ I’m looking at the greater musical community in Pittsburgh. You have a ton of different electronic shit. The reason I moved here is because there’s more electronic acts than metal bands. I’ve traveled all over the country, and never once have I found a city where that is true. Maybe LA.
I think it’s great that these cats are getting representation, but what you’ve got is rave DJs, and you’ve got noise. But there is a secret third thing: ambient electronic music. It just doesn’t get super much attention here, and people like it. But nobody was really booking it. People have been coming out. They fucking love it. It’s really, like, not to sound like a hippie, but, like, #goodvibes in it. People sitting down and enjoying their spooky-sounding keyboard music™. It’s just nice.
It’s a more accessible community space, because you don’t have these big amps and, like, the admittedly kind of hard-to-access metal or hardcore culture. There’s less of a heavy drug presence like there is with the rave crowd. Also no pressure to do the whole dancing thing. It’s not as abrasive or confrontational as noise. There’s a need for it. There’s a space for it. Also, I’m passionate about people performing dungeon-and-affiliated genres live.
So before I moved here, I lived in Philadelphia, right? And when I moved, a buddy of mine out there said something really sad. She said to me, ‘Yeah, I’m sad that there’s not gonna be any more dungeon synth shows out here since you’re moving.’ And that kind of sucks. I’m just one person. And like, I don’t mind booking shows; I actually really like it. It’s fun and makes my brain go brrt. But the fact, but the idea that these shows only exist when I’m playing them, that kind of sucks. So, the idea with creating this booking entity is to create a name where people kind of know what to expect, divorced enough from my name. It feels more like we are building something.
Taiga quickly texts a friend to see if she can disclose an upcoming festival headlining appearance, which she’s given the go-ahead for after refilling her tea. See the details for the Florida Dungeon Fest below.
She also mentions her live improvised set and album recording at the Pittsburgh Gaming Expo, which has now already passed, but she’s excited regardless.
It’s gonna be a live album, 40 minutes long. I haven’t done any prep for it.
That’s great. No, I feel like you do a lot of improv. I feel like every time I’ve seen you live, you’re just like, we’re going crazy.
Yeah, and then, like–that’s because part of it’s because I’m lazy. Part of it’s because life gets crazy real quick, and I am just a girl. But yeah, sometimes it’s real fun to just play on your fucking keyboards.
Behold, many flyers for Taiga’s upcoming live shows, including her no-longer-top-secret headline set at Florida Dungeon Fest.
Jenn Taiga
Instagram | Bandcamp | Steel City Dungeon Synth
