Below is an article I wrote on “food synth” — the impossibly goofy combination of experimental synth with the aesthetic of food and adjacent condiments. The article originally ran in Issue #5 of the printed zine The Reliquary Notes. The Reliquary Notes, arranged and published by Relics of the Enteral City is one of the few current publications specializing in dungeon synth and related interests. It is also the place where I can write about anything which is most likely the reason for this articles existence. After the article ran in the zine, the person behind Onionville shared a new compilation featuring collaborations between other food synth artists. The compilation, The Menu, is perhaps the largest collaboration between contemporary food synth artists and even features perhaps the sole work of artists like Professor Cheddar. Food synth operates under a scrumptious cloak and dagger and the names of the genre are masks donned by sometimes well known artists to make music without pretext or expectation of seriousness. Sometimes the participating artist is well known such as Fernmage or KletTtermax and other times the person is a complete mystery with their work being the only record of their contribution to the world.
Dungeon synth, for all of its fantasy aesthetics, is still an experimental electronic music genre and becasue of that will have people continuing to… well…experiment with electronics. Food synth is one of these experiments and its very existence has sparked controversy and discussion over the merits of its art. Food synth refuses to be serious and is perhaps antagonistic to the traditions of the very genre which nurtured its beginnings. While some people outright dismissed the style for its adversarial and delectable themes, the whole of food synth lies in the heart of noise, abstract electronics, lofi ambient, and complete fucking buffoonery. The nature of art is a continual challenge to sensibilities and food synth, for me, has sparked discussions about art more times than other genres with a more serious composure. The lead image in this article is from one of my favorite covers which shows a an image hand-colored by someone who took the goofiest route but gave the effort of a very focused eight year while doing it. Food synth has taught me many things about how one evaluates music and what people weigh for it to be remembered. If nothing else it has taught me that the low brow exists everywhere and has the same punk ethos which is its sole… delicious … lodestar.
-KAP (Late Summer 2026)
Left of Left Field: The Art of Food Synth
Left of left-field of a genre defined by it’s peculiarities. Delightfully idiosyncratic conceptual powerhouse.
-ev. (Bandcamp blurb)
You think I own a hot dog cart? Hell damn no, but I respect – and at times worship – those who do.
– Hot Dog Cart
Recently the Hot Dog Cart DS posted an image on their social media. I know I am going to be explaining a meme but please bear with me. The image shows the mascot for Hot Dog Cart, one of the most known food synth acts, next to the logo for Fief, one of the most recognizable dungeon synth acts. The caption reads “you thought this was a joke” and it was liked over 100 times by users. 100 likes for a silly post isn’t anything groundbreaking but it is also more engagement than most people get on their internet jokes. The comedy implies that the artist behind Hot Dog Cart and Fief are the same person and this was a grand reveal. The real joke though however is in the niche audience that finds this sort of thing funny as they are the ones who not only have to be aware of Hot Dog Cart as an artist but also the fact that Fief was only recently connected to other prominent dungeon synth acts like Sequestered Keep and Thangorodrim by way of Jordan Whitman’s book DARK DUNGEON MUSIC: THE UNLIKELY STORY OF DUNGEON SYNTH. The truest form of comedy isn’t even the joke but how many people find it funny and are in the loop enough to make the connection based off a shitpost and even how we even got here with a hot dog mascot being some sort of cultural jester of chaos.
I speak for Hot Dog Cart (Hot Dog Fort), Mochi District, Taco Truck, and Sandwich Shop Quartet, as well as the label High Mage Productions. If needed I could speak on behalf of ROMCOMS. The pandemic was a big influence the forming of HMP and HDC, with HMP being formed in August of 2020. The projects we recorded directly before Hot Dog Cart were High Mage’s “Conjuring Witch of the Great Conjunction” and Olde Mage’s “Sickly Castings from the Mourning Grounds”. We had reached a point where we were actually figuring out the keyboards, but still so fucking bad at these brand new (to us) instruments that we hit a (noise) wall. It was winter, and winter on the Front Range in Colorado is generally dogshit. Unless it’s snowing, it’s sunny as shit, cold as fuck, and windy as hell. So we were sad because of COVID, we were sad because of our own limitations, and we were sad about the time of year. We decided to do something goofy, something unheard of and uncelebrated in our new home of dark ambient/DS/drone music. I asked Mike (TLE, The Long Enchanter) “Hot Dog Cart?”, and we banged out “The Perfect Bite”. Six White Claws each and 20min later we had Let’s Be Frank on tape.
– Hot Dog Cart
In 2022, dungeon synth made it to the Grammys by way of an article by Morgan Enos. The article, Inside Dungeon Synth: A Transportive, Atmospheric & Bracingly Earnest Realm, was perhaps one of the highest profile outlet for what began as an internet revival of a decades old dark ambient subgenre. In the article dungeon synth is introduced with quotes from artists like Mortiis, Malfet, and Bard Argol. A sense of drama is also introduced as derisions and deviations from what dungeon synth is and should be was presented as a few serious artists fighting against the blights of low effort jokes. One of these blights was something called “hot dog synth” and a link to Tales from the Flavorful Realm/ Guy Fieri’s 3001: A Spice Odyssey by Flavortoun — which anecdotally made me laugh out loud when I opened it up. For the most part this Grammy article focused on a variety of subjects and uses the low bar saturation of Bandcamp acts as a cautionary tale to a nascent scene of serious artists. In each of these instances these blights are unserious and usually have something to do with dinosaurs and food. In most of the instances the culprit is usually High Mage Productions. If this all sounds familiar you might remember this discussion before about the need to be serious and how there are always that group of people seeming to take the piss out of the universe.
The first artist we collaborated with in the Food synth realm was Thomas of KletTermax/Personal Uschi Records. Thomas has been an enthusiastic supporter of all things Hot Dog Cart and a true champion of Food Synth since its inception. Food Synth Archives was originally the Hot Dog Cart Bandcamp, but with the growing “popularity” of Food Synth, I wanted to make a home JUST for that, for the purveyors and enjoyers and supporters. A place where one could learn of their new favorite food-themed obsession. I should get better at updating it. I wish I knew exactly what attracted people to Food Synth, especially since its roots are technically a blend of tongue-in-cheek punk and dungeon synth, two genres that need some real mental gymnastics to connect. I like to think the ones who genuinely love it are “in” on our joke, a joke that has yet to be made, but is also made constantly.
– Hot Dog Cart
Dungeon synth has always been an experimental electronic scene. Even as far back as the agreed upon genesis of the genre, dark ambient and black metal musicians made instrumental ambient records alongside a very unambient genre of music and distributed them among the same networks which held records. Much later a group of music enthusiasts aided by the internet collected and mimicked these sounds with bedroom production and created an internal network of supporters. My time with dungeon synth saw a group of experimentalists coming to a sound and finding their borders and as soon as it was marked some of the group kept exploring. Before “food synth” was “comfy synth” and before that was “dungeon noise” and before that there was that compilation where everyone used toy instruments that made some people fucking furious and before that there was the Russian contingent of dungeon beatz artists that no one remembers except for like 10 people. For every serious dungeon synth record that is now a part of history there has been an equal amount of people just trying anything. A tale as old as time can be told with a group of people trying to be serious and then some people who can’t help themselves but be very unserious.
I never thought Food Synth™️ would ever catch on, and it’s so touching (and sometimes frustrating) cruising the food synth tag on Bandcamp. Like, wow I’m flattered you feel that way but also you need to back off. I used to say the main rule of food synth is that you have to call it “food synth”. You have to KNOW that you’re doing something goofy, something typically out of your wheelhouse, and something wholly YOU. You think I own a hot dog cart? Hell damn no, but I respect – and at times worship – those who do. Imagine the strength, perseverance, and the resolve to stand out in the sun, over a boiling vat of weenies and a bun steamer, slinging dogs to the masses. Being THE face of the company, with no corpse paint, no costumes, and no masks with which to conceal your identity. I’d like to say food synth means standing in defiance of the old ways, but that’s not right either. I guess there are no real rules. If you’re inspired to make food-themed dark dungeon music, then I can’t wait to hear it. If you’re inspired to make an album about anthropomorphic eggs, I NEED to hear it. Bonus points if it’s recorded live onto tape.
– Hot Dog Cart
Food synth really is just a few record labels having a laugh with a few other weirdo artists who seem to get the joke and want in on the fun. The music outside of a unified aesthetic of .. food… is an array of dungeon synth, comfy synth, library music, slacker rock, psychedelic, drone, noise, ambient, art rock, and many flavors of experimental electronics. Most of the music is made by recording directly to tape with little oversight when it comes to mixing and mastering but a serious effort in making the covers look as absurd as possible. These tapes are made and sold to a small but loyal network and seem to be released in the same way one would throw trash out the window. Even the aforementioned blight on dungeon synth, Tales from the Flavorful Realm/ Guy Fieri’s 3001: A Spice Odyssey is a delightful breezy collection of what sounds like sitcom anthems from television shows from the 1980s which never aired. It isn’t dungeon synth by any stretch of the imagination but its funny as hell and made from the same bedroom consumed by people with a closet full of black t shirts. I have come to see a very raw spirit of rebellion but also something more akin to the underground offshoots which split off from a genre when it gets too stuffy. Much like post punk of the late 1970s and early 1980s, food synth seems to push boundaries. Whereas the whole of post punk could be thought of as an artistic exploration which took up the mantle of bands like The Stooges and Patti Smith, food synth retains the DIY ethos of dungeon synth and to be adversarial when it comes to its aesthetics. It isn’t fantastical, nor is it serious, and seems to exist for two reasons — one is to instill some sort of emotional reminder this is all for fun and the other is to be the eternal heel which threatens to sanctity of an underground genre. This music is a candle of discovery as there seems to be no rules and the world of food synth is burning bright with chaos.
I have, in the last few years, come to the realization that I’m attracted to the odd and unusual. Food Synth being a very vague genre with some very loosely set rules makes for a very wide spectrum of possibilities musically. To use a food related metaphor, Food Synth is like a box of chocolates… Food Synth is just fun and sometimes fun is okay. I genuinely enjoy the music, and getting to know the roughly dozen or so artists making it, and those artists being extremely nice folks, drives me to want to support them and their unhinged musical endeavors. As far as my actual physical Food Synth collection goes, there was a tipping point, what started as organically collecting tapes I enjoyed, to realizing I had most physical releases of what one would consider Food Synth, and now trying to get my hands on past releases that I missed, what a select few have coined “proto-Food Synth,” or food related Dungeon Synth releases from before “Food Synth” became the term used. So, if anyone has a copy of Abandoned In The Pizza Shop To The Night Of Devouring Emptiness by Forlorn Pizza Parlor or The Auspicious Reign Of Good Eating by The Merrie Glutton they wouldn’t mind coming off of, please feel free to hit me up. Food Synth IS Dungeon Synth.
– Zack (Onionville)
Dadaism was an early 20th century art movement centered in Europe during the first World War. The movement was a group of artists responding to the commodification of the current art establishment by making the most ridiculous shit possible. You might have seen Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain which was an upside urinal hanging on a wall. Dadaism rejected rationality and logic in favor of chaos and absurdity. Everything seemed to be a joke aimed at the ones who were not in on the joke. The ones taking things too seriously or upset at the lack of decorum were the squares in the room. Dadaism was running alongside the atrocities of the First World War whose lurch in killing technology thrust the whole of world into an alternative reality. Dadaism was a morbid satire or comedic funeral for a world which died in front of those who saw its effects. Dadasim would eventually influence Surrealism which took the same rejection of the rational just mixed with the inverted logic of dreams and maybe with a less “urinal on the wall” approach to sculptures. If we want to think of food synth being the same rejection of a world warped by a global pandemic, it would be an interesting connection. It would also be absurd. It would also be fucking hilarious. Art much like music exists because a group of people decide not to be serious all of the time. The establishment is always the ones telling people to shut up and avant-garde are always the ones acting like fucking clowns. We will never know what Marcel Duchamp, Tristan Tzara, Salvador Dali or any of the other absurdists of the early 20th century would think about a genre of food based music on a digital platform a century later but it is not out of the realm of possibility they would be laughing along with the rest of us.
Duchamp would be into it … I know it.
– KAP Spring 2026