Kobold

LP. Limited edition. Black vinyl. RPG module booklet with map. The first HDK cassette sold two copies. Possibly three. Then, in the summer of 2017, something called Kobold knocked on the door of this Milanese DIY collective with The Cave of the Lost Talisman, and the whole thing changed. The tape had a concept: every track corresponded to a location on an actual dungeon map, the music scored a playable D&D adventure module, and the listener could follow plot and music simultaneously through the included booklet. It was a small, ridiculous, completely sincere idea - and it found, immediately, a world of people who had been waiting for exactly this thing without knowing it.

The Valley of the Forgotten Secrets, originally released on cassette in December 2018, is the third and final chapter of the Black Priest's Saga. The same adventuring party - who retrieved the cursed talisman in the cave, survived the abbey - now faces the longest journey: a forgotten valley, an unresolved mystery, the promise of closure. Sixteen tracks, each one a scene. "Riding Through the Wildlands" opens with propulsive 16-bit momentum that immediately signals you are on a quest and there is no going back. "The Inn at the Edge of the World" offers a brief moment of warmth before the complications begin. "Surprised by Wandering Monsters" does exactly what it says. "Resting on the Shores of the Dark Lake" is genuinely still - a pause in which the analogue synths breathe and the pixel-melody hangs in the air. "The Good Is Evil, The Evil Is Good" is the tonal pivot, the moment the adventure turns against itself. "Farewell Adventurers (Into Glory Ride)" is an ending that earns its grandeur.

Kobold's music sits in a specific intersection that has no entirely accurate name: dungeon synth with the melodic logic and timbre of 8 and 16-bit CRPG soundtracks - Pool of Radiance, Dungeon Master, Bloodwych on Commodore Amiga - structured as pop songs with verse and chorus, but scored for environments and encounters rather than emotions. The analogue synths grunt and clatter, the melodies are catchy and slightly dangerous, the tempo accelerates when danger arrives. It is not ambient. It is not ironic. It is, in the words of the HDK collective themselves, "children of the Cold War who spent many hours in dungeon exploration and dice rolls" making exactly the music those children needed. This vinyl edition, part of the HDK Classic Series bringing the label's defining cassette releases to LP, comes with the complete RPG module - map, illustrations, playable adventure - as a booklet. The music and the quest arrive together.