Welcome to the first of a new series of posts where I go into a thing (a genre of music, a band, a book, a genre of film, an actor, whatever) and really get into it, explaining it, giving examples, and showing you why I enjoy that particular thing in its many facets. I have a few more currently planned, all, oddly enough, music-based, so if you like the idea, and the format – please let me know and feel free to give me ideas of things you’d like to see me dig into.
For now, though, let’s start off with synthwave.
Around the mid/late 2000s people started having extreme 80s nostalgia. Which, as someone who was around for the 80s, is hysterical. I mean it isn’t entirely misplaced – I loved the 80s, too. It’s just that around then the 80s were around 30 years prior and the distortion-field was in full effect.
What I mean by distortion field is that if you said “the 80s” everyone took it to mean this specific kind of neon, geometric-shaped ascetic. I’m not saying it didn’t exist but it didn’t dominate every corner of every room and closet. That sort of pattern was cool, but it existed on arcade rugs, and in magazines to tell you they were cool. It wasn’t what most people lived in, but what we saw on TV.
So, of course, when a bunch of 30 year olds think back to when they were tiny, they go and watch the TV they grew up watching and see that and people younger then them have no memory of the time itself so they end up in the same place and suddenly you get this distortion field around the decade that everything just looked like that at all times.
Every decade has a distortion field when it comes to this stuff. The reality is every decade was still half in the
decade before it, and only slowly crept toward the vision for itself that TV and film depicts. But that’s not why we’re here.
We’re here for the music.
Now 80s music was, like in any other time in the history of recording music, wide and varied. Even in terms of the bit hits of the 80s. Even if you take into account that most decades don’t hit their stride until somewhere around the second to fourth year, looking at the top ten songs of 1982-1986 you’ll certainly see more electronic/synth based music but it is maybe half the big sound of the time. (You can go look for yourself by clicking this to see list of the top ten songs 1980-1989)
There was a bunch of synth-pop, don’t get me wrong. But I don’t think it was the defining sound of the 80s. I may be off. But now we get to synthwave.
And here’s my favorite bit: Synthwave is very specifically supposed to sound like “the 80s” in terms of ascetic. But it is driven by nostalgia, and sounds like what people now think the 80s sounded like. The laughter, for me, comes in when you realize that the synth-pop and Vangelis soundtracks and all in the 80s were supposed to sound like The Future! A good 40 years away.
And here we are, almost 40 years later, creating music that sounds like what 40 years ago thought now would sound like. Without irony that is amazing and hysterical and I love it.
Please keep in mind that synthwave has a ton of deeply devoted, knowledgeable fans. I’m just a guy who got into some recently and am sharing these thoughts with you as a sort of primer.
Synthwave (also known as Retrowave) has many sub-genres the same way any genre would. Darkwave is, well, synthwave but 80s/90s goth music flavored. Vaporwave is slower, softer stuff, generally much like chillwave. Other subgenres like outrun (which has more retro-gaming leanings) also exist.
Visually the entire collective of music takes from neon pink and blues and purples as well as 8-bit and graphics of the 80s.
Outside of the fundamentally funny angle on this, what is synthwave? It’s a way to use the musical tools of right now to capture a vibe, and glimpse, of a past that never really was except in our hearts. It’s a Trapper Keeper with robots on it made sonic. Or, in the case of a lot of darkwave, it’s Heathers, boiled down and distilled until you can drink it.
Is that good or bad? That depends on you and your musical tastes, but I do feel like it’s at least worth exploring. A lot of synthwave will transport you to a time that never really was, but one that we all wanted. Some Daft Punk (think the Tron Legacy soundtrack) is the sound of synthwave as much as Vangelis, the Drive soundtrack, or synth-pop hits of the 80s.
It sounds familiar, at least it will if you grew up in the 80s. Though the 80s sensibility, that fake thing we carry in our heads, is prevalent enough I think it’ll sound familiar to others as well.
So let’s go to some fun examples that I, personally, enjoy and think you might as well:
The Midnight (Bandcamp)
The Midnight are one of the biggest players in the synthwave game. They release a lot of tracks that have lyrics, in that sort of synth-pop vein. The lyrics are often cheesy in a very specific “you could quint and mistake these for songs in an 80s-type movie” way. They will also do instrumental releases of most of their albums, which is cool of them.
Also a band that releases instrumental versions of their albums, Gunship feel very pure to me, in a way that can be hard to articulate. It’s synthwave that isn’t quite trying to fake the 80s so much as roll around and play in what they feel the 80s were.
Some prime darkwave, right here. They remind me of things like Lacuna Coil. Good beats, and of course good synths and vibes that very much evoke a goth-y nightclub.
Some more darkwave for you, they fit right in with Sidewalks and Skeletons, though on the slower end of the scale, more mood than you could shake a lace-covered, leather crop at. And it’s wonderful.
Some good, solid, synthwave here. They really know exactly what they’re doing and want to really give you that theoretical 80s vibe in a big way.
These folks from the UK run the spectrum from synth-pop to vaporwave and have a ton of style while they do it. Very vibe-y, they make for great soundtrack music for your day. Though they can vary in style a bit, it all feels internally consistent, which is awesome. Plus, while there will always be that sense, if you listen to enough of any genre, of a semi-sameness floating around, L’Avenue tend to stand out that tiny extra bit at the edges.
The Opus Science Collective is a guy in the UK who puts out a ton of work. Some of it is vaporwave and chill, some of it is vibey and synth-pop leaning and two are specifically Ghostbusters inspired and you have to hear them to 100% get it but yeah they feel like synthwave from the film that, admittedly, had a synth-pop tune or two on the soundtrack. A lot of fun stuff to be found there.
Credited as the creator of chillwave, Home has some lovely tracks spread throughout a long career starting in 2013. Some of their music is out through various publishers, with their newer stuff being released themselves at the link above.
Hollywood Burns (Bandcamp)
Hollywood Burns is an amazing French band that have two albums out, both of which work are soundtracks to movies that never happened. Not that each is a single soundtrack, just that every track is very much movie-vibe-esque in the best way possible. Also the last minute of Saturday Night Screamer is one of the darkly funniest things I’ve heard all year.
Leathers is the solo project of Shannon Hemmett of the band Actors. Sitting somewhere in the realm of Darkwave Leathers hits you right in that Cocteau Twins but synthwave sort of space. Not even close to exactly, but emotionally. They fill that void from the late 80s of good goth electronic/rock that, let’s be honest, we miss.
And then we have Shannon Hemmett’s full band, Actors. I contemplated which way that should go, but in the end, though they have many, many, similarities in sound, Actors is a bit less raw, in a way I enjoy. You may like the slight step of distance it provides, however, and even if you prefer Leathers as a project, Actors is a very tight second.
There are more bands than I could hope to ever list and I am sure a serious synthwave fan would hate this whole post. Hell, there are so many sub-genres and things to say about them I couldn’t hope to get it all across. If it interests you at all, you can always go to the Synthwave fandom wiki and go nuts.
But as a deeper than some, not as deep as others, dive into things, this is hopefully a good place to start a journey into a type music that you know, though maybe you haven’t heard.
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