Interview segments from VOYAGES 001 (2024) — Published by Fantasy Audio Magazine.
The introduction has been expanded for this online article.
My first experience with Mark Griffiths came through a 2024 Reddit post where the artist’s posted his album under the title of “I’ve been told this is dungeon synth, it’s my album from 1987. First post on Reddit so let me know if I’ve messed up in someway. It’s also on Bandcamp.”
Listening to K2 for the first and reading the post I thought it was an elaborate prank where someone made an album in 2024 and released it under the guise of it being from the 1980’s potentially fooling tens of users. One would be excused for thinking this as K2 is a competent record with dream music dedicated to things of this earth and what sounded like fantasy soundscapes. There is no way this was from 1987 and just randomly appeared on the internet. I apparently was wrong and this is exactly what it was. I contacted Mark and we discussed making this record.
K2 is an extraordinary collection of music which feels visionary in its making. From what we know about dungeon synth now, K2 is a prophecy of a melodic synth that could have been made in the past few years and everyone would have believed it. This combined with the fact K2 is still being presented with its original hand drawn cover makes this release even more special. The fact Mark Griffiths had the notion to go onto a new community and put himself out there and it leading to a positive response makes me hopeful for more things like this waiting for the chance to be appreciated once again.
For anyone interested, you can find the majority of Mark Griffiths work on Bandcamp including work from the 1980s into the past decade. While the music is a range of styles including cosmic Berlin school experimentation to abstract drone, one thing is consistent — the has been making synth music for himself with interested parties always welcome. In our eventual conversations, I asked if Mark wanted to ever re-release his material as I knew a few labels who would be interested. Mark politely declined as he said he already had a deal worked out with a label in the states. This was earlier this year and for half of a year I was baffled by what label already contacted him since the people who would be interested in a new age / fantasy ambient release form the 1980’s was probably 3 and I knew all of them.
Much to my surprise, I eventually learned Neverwood Records was reissuing K2 and I couldn’t have been happier. It was also not in the three that I suspected. The Neverwood release has K2 in a wooden jcard spine which makes the music even more earthly and potentially connects it to the themes present in the record. Perhaps we will see more archival work in the future which extents the aperture of what we think of dungeon synth. this could also be an entirely separate genre just enjoyed by fans of both. Whatever the case, I am happy to finally see a re-release of this record and thank Mark for being brave enough to wander into a new community and ask if anyone wants to hear some mystical synth.
KAP: One of my hypotheses is the introduction of budget electronics gave solo musicians the resources to make DIY albums. Can you tell me about your music history and how you came to embrace synths?
Mark: I first started to want to create music in my late teens. I loved the sounds I was hearing from space rock bands like Hawkwind, Gong and the Steve Hillage Band. I wanted to make those sounds myself. Synthesisers were relatively expensive so I started making more experimental noises using acoustic guitar, recorder, anything I could lay my hands on really, and use cheap domestic reel to reels to create loops, slow sounds down, speed them up etc. I think 1978-80 was a turning point in synth history, at least in the UK, because synthesisers suddenly became more affordable. Suddenly you didn’t need to be in a big-name band or a high level professional musician to buy one. I first got my hands briefly on synthesisers when I was 19 and had a few hours on Korg MS10s and 20s which were popular in the UK. A year or so later I got my first simple monophonic synthesiser, a Roland SH2. I soon added a simple digital sequencer and a prosumer reel to reel and I was away! In 1982 I was invited to contribute to a cassette release with two other local bands. I hired a TEAC Portastudio (4 track cassette recorder with mixer built in) for a week or so and managed to record about 20 minutes worth of music. It made for strange bedfellow with the Heavy Metal and Reggae on the rest of that tape! Later that year I bought a TEAC 34 four track recorder and a little mixer, I could now create my own music without any time pressures. Everything then more or less flowed from that.
Can you tell me about the process of making K2?
K2 was my third public release and added a second synthesiser to my arsenal, one of those new-fangled digital FM synths, a Yamaha DX9! It was also my first experience with a polyphonic synth. Most importantly the DX9 considerably expanded my sound palette, it could produce “realistic” sounding acoustic instruments like flutes and cellos. (Samplers were still all out of reach financially at the time). The album was recorded between May 85 and March 87, apart from “Crystallography II” (which had also been on “Crystallography”), recorded October 1984. The reason for the long gestation period was that my third release was supposed to be something called “Transmixxion”. For some reason I wasn’t happy with that, some of it remained unreleased until recently (“The Transmixxion Sessions”), while some was retained, and new material added to create the K2 album. I’m often asked about the music titles and themes. The main theme of K2 is the beauty of nature on a grand scale, hence “K2”, “Lakeland” “Atoll” and “I sailed to meet her”. Fun fact: the title “I sailed to meet her” was a title I’d had rattling around in my head since the 70s and came from mis-hearing the name of the master Japanese synthesist “Isao Tomita”.
The other theme was inner landscapes but given some kind of geographical title, so “Holland of the Heart”, “Holland of the Mind”, while “On the road to Damascus” starts in turmoil but ends on a sense of peace. “Sound and Fury” used a similar idea, it works to a crescendo and then falls away. The title is from McBeth “it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Syntax and the Faith Healer were just titles I liked at the time.
Equipment used:
Roland SH2 monophonic synthesiser
Roland CSQ 100 Digital Sequencer
Yamaha DX9 FM Synthesiser
Arion Stereo Chorus guitar pedal
ReVox A77 for tape echo and mix down
Roland Cube 20 Amplifier (also provided spring reverb)
TEAC 6 to 4 mixer
TEAC 34 four track reel to reel
On Discogs you have three albums but your bandcamp showed an uptick in activity within the past 10 years. What made you start making music again?
Discogs is very incomplete, I think it only lists physical releases and even that is incomplete. There was a real gap in music making but that was around 1997-2004. That was due to several reasons, my career became more demanding, and my spare time was taken up with civic work and activism. Another major reason was the old equipment had started to fail and I didn’t have the resources to get it repaired. But the desire to create music again started to build. Around 2003/4 I discovered that hard disk recording was now practical and affordable (as in DAWs were now sequencers and audio recorders) and that you could get virtual copies of wonderful synthesizers for very little money. I put down a bit of cash and had the (virtual) studio of my dreams. The music from 2004 – 2015ish ended up on Soundclick, the stuff after that was on Bandcamp. I’m now starting to put that material up on Bandcamp, as well as the really early stuff.There is also a smaller gap around 2016/17 because I was working on some Production music (aka Library records). The deal on those precludes me from releasing that music in any form myself.