The Spectre of the Duke is a dark ambient and dungeon synth album, imbued with gothic techno sensibilities, and which emerges like a revenant from a toppled cairn and decorated mound that exists on the opposite side of a border hedge from the sterile, civilized world. It is the product of Italian producer Luciano Lamanna, laboring on the influence of his genius as Analog Lucifer.
A legend has it, the stalwart studio wizard sent a message (presumable by crow or other great fowl) to the clairvoyant curators over at Heimat Der Katastrophe requesting their audience and petitioning for permission to cast a great spell on their behalf. Obviously, they said, "Poggers, yeah! Of course, we're down with that!"
Ye, verily, they said "yay," but there was a small proviso. Luciano had to write a dungeon synth album that followed a specific narrative format, that of a classic Dungeons and Dragons campaign. Heimat Der Katastrophe wrote a story for Luciano about the sunken tomb of a disgraced and vile nobleman by the name of Duke Friedrick Gonzagor, and the horrors that lurked in the chambers of his cella. It's unclear as to why they did this (possibly, some ancient form of ritual hazing?), but regardless, Luciano delivered.
The Spectre of the Duke as an album is an intensely gloomy and atmospheric effort whose aura and bearings are suitably otherwordly. Far from being inert, the album is captured by a courageous sense or motions, propelled forward by an energizing mingling of adrenaline and trepidation. This is a sensible approach to the album's structure, as the goal of any dungeon-crawling expedition is simply to advance to the opisthodomos and return with your life. There is a notion of progression inherent in such a campaign that manifests in both the ingress and egress within a magical realm of exceptional danger and extraordinary circumstance, and this understanding is elemental to the music of The Spectre of the Duke. Constant motion is a sensible and necessary survival strategy in this kind of saga as every moment you are idle in the necropolis, is a moment when you may meet a terrible fate in the bony clutches of some necrotic ghoul. Thankfully, Spectre of the Duke never lingers on a beat or a texture long enough for it to feel stale as it is constantly breathing fresh air into the mix and flushing out the cobwebs and miasmic air of its setting.
Like the heroes of the battles that inspired its story, Luciano has returned victorious from his journey into the depth of the unknown and uncanny, and we are all now in his debts.
