Jenn Taiga talks swords, sadomasochism, and synthesizers ahead of new album and tour

Imagine a dungeon: rough-hewn stone walls, distant dripping and dank smells, skeletons moldering in irons. Rats creep along slimy floors. Monsters lurk in the corners. How would you soundtrack that journey into darkness?

It’s a question artists such as Jenn Taiga have sought to explore in the small but flourishing dungeon synth scene. As the name implies, the genre uses synthesized sounds to create a grim atmosphere. Many artists draw on influences ranging from video and tabletop games to the grim, frostbitten textures of early Norwegian black metal records. In Taiga’s case, her music draws on classical training, BDSM, and mental illness to conjure a powerful sense of foreboding.

Taiga now lives in Greater Pittsburgh. I meet her over tea after work to discuss the genre and her forthcoming album Sanguine Descent, due out in July via Fiadh Productions. The name proves surprisingly literal — Taiga has previously incorporated real blood into her live performances.

“For some of my more special shows, I will either drink my blood or drink the blood of one of my partners,” Taiga tells Pittsburgh City Paper. “So I very much put that sort of thing on definite physical display for a while.”

Before the blood, there was Beethoven. Taiga began playing classical piano at age seven and later enrolled in a performing arts school, where a music teacher introduced her to prog rock. “That’s where I discovered synthesizers. I was like, holy shit, this is cool, and it was kind of downhill from there,” she jokes.

In her early 20s, after trying and failing to form a prog band, Taiga decided to go solo. “I wanted to do a Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze type of deal, but with Dungeons & Dragons instead of space and cosmos,” she says. At one point, a friend sent Taiga a grainy video of Massachusetts dungeon synth act Sombre Arcane. The artists got in touch, and Taiga was hooked.

“Mind you, my musical stuff has evolved a lot since then, and I no longer do the wizard cosplay, but at the time, that’s where it sort of clicked in,” Taiga says.

Taiga uses layers of analog synthesizer to create her pieces, a process that involves manually modulating sounds — in other words, this is hardly “computer music” and is all played in real time live. She takes a beat to recall just how many synths she owns. The collection includes a Moog and a Korg Prologue. Taiga uses different synthesizers alone or in combination to create ambience or simulate string or bell sounds.

Beyond evoking moldering halls and rusted iron, Taiga has used those fine-tuned sounds to paint a picture of personal struggle. Much of her music is about suicidal ideation and sadomasochism. Mental illness played a prominent role in the songwriting of Sanguine Descent.

“One of the big themes of the album, at least from a metatextual perspective, is feeling both physical and emotional descent,” she says. “It is, in a sense, an allegory for the cycles that a person goes through while they’re dealing with suicidal ideation.”

Taiga is trans and has been recording dungeon synth for about a decade, concurrent with her deepening understanding of her gender identity. Alongside fellow dungeon synth artist Vaelastrasz and black metal acts including Pittsburgh-based Genital Shame, she’s one of a growing number of LGBTQ artists pushing the frontiers of extreme and experimental music, and she’s done so in part by leveraging the personal and social challenges of navigating the world as a neurodivergent and gender-nonconforming person.

What that translates to, musically, is a carefully constructed sense of dread and yearning that’s reflected across Sanguine Descent’s four tracks. The “descent” moniker is apt: while opener “Folly of Triumph” contains some hopeful modulations, each subsequent song unfolds with more dolorous tones toward the ominous, bassy closer, “A Last Kiss Wounds Deeper Than a Blade.” The piano-spangled conclusion strikes a beautiful balance between wistfulness and morbidity.

This, says Fiadh Productions owner and founder Bariann Tuite, made it a natural fit for the eclectic antifascist label. “This release encompasses the dark romanticism I often associate with her sound and live performances,” Tuite tells City Paper via email. “Sanguine Descent not only captures the positive aspects of ‘traditional’ art, but carries over the very human quest to love and be loved, and our willingness to bleed for it.”

Taiga’s willingness to bleed has extended, as mentioned, to select live performances. Her arrival in Pittsburgh last year followed a personal rough patch and abortive move to Philly, and Taiga channeled those negative emotions into a “stark,” holistic live show.

“The last large tour I went on in 2023, I did consistently flog myself during my sets, increasing the number [of flagellations] after every show. And I also made sure that I was underfed for eight hours before a performance,” she says. “How I approach the performance of live music and how I practice sadomasochism are very similar, and so I think, from an approach standpoint, it only makes sense that they’re going to intersect, and they are going to strike.”

As we discuss the role of weapons in her live performances, Taiga draws a sharp knife from a sheath at her hip. Dungeon synth’s adjacency to black metal means there are also “shitheads” in the crowd sometimes, she notes.

“When I am out performing, I’m a very visibly trans person, and it’s important for me to try to make my spaces as safe as I can,” she says. “And so part of the reason why I avoid more theatrical crop weapons and instead choose to use real live ones is kind of as a challenge. I’m not toothless.”

Pittsburghers and dungeon synth fans will soon have the chance to descend into Taiga’s musical world. Sanguine Descent releases July 4, and Taiga will be playing alongside Hillsfar, Phranick, and Mithra at a dungeon synth barbecue that same day. The show won’t focus on physical pain, but for those seeking a solemn, richly patterned exploration of inner turmoil — and/or a perfect soundtrack to your Curse of Strahd campaign — the genre is as vital as it’s ever been, and Taiga is as real as it gets.

“You’ve got a lot of dungeon synth artists being like, ‘Oh, I’m so raw and vampiric and such.’ They get really prudish when you have a gay person actually drinking blood [on stage]. And so part of the reason why I will do that is to kind of come up to these people, who usually are also bigoted, and say, ‘Yeah? Fucking bet.’”

This article appears in Jun 18-24, 2025.