EVERY GENRE PROJECT - August 22 - Comfy Synth

Genre of the Day - Comfy Synth

Album of the Day - Memory Box by Grandma’s Cottage (2020)

The soothing capacity of music is a quality most music listeners consider from time to time. Some people may relax via jazz, others via lo-fi, and many find peace in the elegance of classical music. I find Sade is my go-to for a balance of musical intrigue and soul-settling composition. Creating a soothing ambience explicitly is perhaps not as common a skew in the creator’s mind in comparison to a listener. Comfy synth tells a different story, one embroidered through synths that are fuzzy in the same way a shag carpet is—so, comforting to a degree—and a post-modern take on New Age’s sedative synth relaxations. I also am striving earnestly to feel comfy amidst trials and tribulations—I bought an essential oil diffuser today for the first time, which feels like a step in a cozy direction.

Comfy Synth emerged only a few years ago, though its precedence is in a decades-ago interpretation of nostalgia. Its predecessor in dungeon synth revolved around epic, dark evocations of wizardry and fantasy, whimsically painted through ‘90s synthesizer glory. Dungeon synth emerged from the Nordic death metal scene of all places, though it’s understandable that certain musicians must’ve felt some sort of elven calling all too familiar (the people around me and I declared last Halloween cycle one of wizardry and elves.) Comfy synth appeared in the late 2010s, and its emergence was unknowingly prescient upon the dawn of the COVID-19 pandemic. Comfy synth aptly reflected the way quarantine flipped the concept of comfy on its head as people were confined to the comforts and perils of home-bound life, which also spawned the cottagecore craze. 

Comfy synth aims to musically capture the most kitschy vision of a grandmother’s house like a Kinkade painting, replete with trinkets and dust, or perhaps a hippie gift shop in a small town, or a cutesy frog statue sitting untouched on a thrift store shelf. It resembles utopian virtual’s extension of New Age but with all the newfangled technological optimism stripped. Musically, hazy, lo-fi clouds hang over softly looping MIDI instruments playing wistful, simple melodies like those of a music box. It feels suspended in  a sonic amber and a bit threadbare, as some comfy synth composers choose to add off-kilter bittersweetness in out-of-key melodies. As a feeling, comfy synth is personally resonant in a time when the aesthetic it takes inspiration from seems as if it is slipping away. Though my grandma’s house, which I was lucky to go to last month, feels like a true grandparent abode with her little collections of bells and floral wallpapers, my great-aunt lives in a senior living complex just as sleek and geometrically stark as any apartment building populated by millennials. 

Today’s album, Memory Box, came pre-wrapped with a bow as it came out shortly before Christmas 2020. Dusty, low-quality synthesized flutes and vocalized keys set the scene of a day drenched in memories not your own in “painting eggs”, like sifting through a family member’s old photos during a visit. The melodies are simple, but deeply emotive as in the yearning “memory box.” “calico” is a chilly and distant reminder that such pleasantries can just as easily be a somber trap in reawakening buried emotion. Even so, the album’s sepia-toned vignettes of a fairytale cottage act as a wonderful trip down a memory lane wholly of one’s own imagination.