Showing posts with label 80s. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 80s. Show all posts

Sunday, March 12, 2017

猫 シ Corp's Vaporwave, Mallsoft: Nostalgia for a pre-9/11 World

Having read, The Mall, Nostalgia, and the Loss of Innocence: An Interview With 猫 シ Corp., what's most fascinating for me is an exploration of the reason for using a sound that's so reminiscent of the 1980s/1990s - and how that connects more broadly to western music's obsession with those decades:
"[猫 シ Corp'] cryptically tells us [his work] provides “an image of a (past) world that we love to escape to because our old world died in 2001.” 
"[...], it becomes much clearer when we consider another recent album—NEWS AT 11—and realize  that his records share in the same intriguing worldview, one which partly involves blocking out the troubling turn world history took after a certain catastrophic event.  As hinted at by the album’s release on September 11, 2016, this event was the 9/11 terrorist attack, which the producer confirms “was indeed the subtle, but yet very obvious, theme of the album.” He explains, “When the Twin Towers were hit on that day in September the old world died. It’s like the whole planet suddenly opened up and changed, [and] not for the better. Gone were the peaceful days.” 
“Vaporwave relies heavily on 80’s consumerism, fashion, stylish malls with palm trees and late night drives on neon lit streets,” since these tropes help artists such as himself — and perhaps society as a whole — to deny that history has branched off in the way it actually has, and to act as if things have continued as their nostalgia reconstructs it.
[...]  it’s the memory of simpler and more innocent times that plays a big part here in 猫 シ Corp.’s artistic vision. He also thinks it plays a big part in the vision that drives much vaporwave, describing the genre as “a glorification of a past that never was."



Saturday, September 10, 2016

The Midnight - Endless Summer (Instrumental version)

A wonderful synthwave track by The Midnight:



Also worth listening to is the rest of the album:

Friday, August 26, 2016

S U R VI V E - RR7349 singles

The band behind the soundtrack to Netflix 'Stranger Things' is releasing a new album on Sept 30th 2016, and have some amazing dark, driving synthy tracks available for listening.






I'll be certain to get their album once it's available on Bandcamp, but I'm hoping for a release of that amazing looking cover art too.



Music that reminds me of the dreams my childhood self had of the distant future: how the past remembers the future has been a preoccupation of mine artistically. I'm happy to see series like Stranger Things give a musical platform to modern acts like SURVIVE for that reason.


Check out the io9 article for more information about their upcoming (US) tour.

A previous 2012 album by the band in full, S U R V I V E - S U R V I V E:



Tuesday, July 26, 2016

Tears In Rain: A Tribute Album to Blade Runner (FCR)


A very well produced compilation paying tribute to the sound of Vangelis' Blade Runner sound track. The beginning of 'Shinjuku Rose' is a bit jarring, but the rest of the track - and album are stellar.



Full size album art:



Thursday, April 28, 2016

Rise of the Synths - Documentary



The Rise of the Synths
, sounding like '50s B-movie that never was is actually an crowd funding effort to by director Ivan Castell to create a documentary about the very music genre I've focused on the past few years: 'Sythwave', 'Retrowave', or just '80s sounding stuff' to some,
 

“... At least for me, it’s a reinterpretation of a retro sound that taps into somewhere in your brain and brings back memories from your childhood,” he told Vehlinggo recently. Basically, he’s saying that what these artists are doing isn’t always retro, or always 80s, but they’re using the pastiche and modern production to evoke particular moods. I tend to agree." [link]
I've written about the topic early on in this blog, mainly because it was something that I never saw articulated anywhere else. It was music that just emerged online without a physical touring or mainstream presence and tapped directly into how I imagined the future would sound as a child in the late 80's and early '90s.

I'm very interested to see what comes of this documentary, particularly given the lineup currently listed:

College, Electric Youth, Maethelvin, Com Truise, Miami Nights 1984, Kristine, Lazerhawk, Mitch Murder, Power Glove, Futurecop!, OGRE, Dance with the Dead, Night Crawler, Vincenzo Salvia, Stellar Dreams, The Midnight, Jordan F, Betamaxx, 80s Stallone, Dynatron, Darkest, Carpenter Brut, Timecop1983, Waveshaper, and MPM Soundtracks.
The whole interview is worth reading, and I'd hope anyone with a love of this musical genre pledges some kind of support to the documentary maker. It would certainly create a nice musical touchstone to show people unfamiliar with this style of music - and to help delineate it from actual 80's synthpop.

 

Monday, April 25, 2016

The transition of remixes and covers: Under your Spell

Discovering how different musicians and remix artists reinterpret a song can be an interesting journey to take. Case in point - 'Under Your Spell' by the 80's-esk group DESIRE. This track was released in 2009, and appeared in the 2011 film DRIVE.

A common complaint was the 80's 'Breakfast Club'-esk talking interlude in the middle of the original song:



 An edit exists that removes this section:




Other artists have reinterpreted the song further, while incorporating improvements to it's structure like the clean edit:



Other versions, perhaps released as B-Sides provide an acoustic/synth only track:



Among the most distant renditions is a looped vaporwave version, highlighting the core aspects of the song:



Friday, March 11, 2016

FUTURE SHOCK: Orson Wells brings us Beyond the Black Rainbow

I had the pleasure of watching the late Orson Wells narrate/star in FUTURE SHOCK, a mid-1970s schlocky documentary about how too much change too quickly could destroy (western) society.

I remember the book, and it's interesting cover on my grandfather's book shelf when I was a child. He was an avid reader of Vonnegut and JFK assassination theories - disseminated in the pre-digital age as small novelette-sized printed books. The original film (which was originally created for screening at the Cannes Film festival) feels like something my grandfather would have enjoyed:



Aside from the synthy music, what struck me about the documentary was how seriously it took it self. "We're faced with so many choices, so many decisions, and we have to make them so quickly. None of us can escape the pressures. That's what future shock is all about." Orson Wells reads this dramatically over '70s disco montage music showing various things people can purchase, including 8-track tapes. While incredibly dated, that's part of the charm of this 'documentary'. From a modern point of view, it documents a future that never came to pass - at least not in the form predicted.
Consistently, FUTURE SHOCK (perhaps intentionally), blended 'modern day' late '60s/ early '70s footage into what it predicted will be the future.  At times, I couldn't tell if they were showing an interview with a person from the '70s about science, pharmacology, hitch hiking or polyamorous living, - or if those sections were intended to be set in some distopian 'future'. The aim seemed to gleefully revel at change, and simultaneously communicate how TERRIFYING this change was, and that you shouldn't like it.

I decided to watch BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW afterwards: it's a modern film set and styled as occurring in 1983 which deals with similar issues. Playing the ending of FUTURE SHOCK over top of this films' cassette tape-style introduction created a nice bridge - almost as if FUTURE SHOCK was a spiritual prequel to Panos Cosmatos film:



The intro 'Promotional' video above for the Arboria Institute above is the beginning to BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW. This film is fictionally set in the same time frame as FUTURE SHOCK, and it provides an interesting segway: it posits that the disposable, futuristic society Wells drones about actually comes to pass in the form of Huxley's Brave New World -- an assembly line society where everyone is medicated by a societal elite. People struggle to cope in this dark, 'future shocked' world, and turn instead to 'benign pharmacology, sensory therapy, and energy sculpting, " to find "contentment and inner peace". 

Be sure to check out the article about FUTURE SHOCK at DangerousMinds.net which goes into some interesting detail about the production and the ideas within.

Sunday, January 24, 2016

C (299,792 km/s) - Retrofuturistic 80s Synthwave Short Sci-Fi film

C (299,792 km/s) from Seaquark Films on Vimeo.


To stop time, and live in a memory of a memory. The present's vision of what the past's vision of the future was. Filters within filters.

C (299,792 km/s) was a crowfunded independent short SF film that seems to combine a late 70s, early 80s Carl Sagan/Cosmos vibe with a futuristic tale of humanity, topped off with synthwave music by Sellorekt.

Trevor Something - Death Dream



 I enjoy the VHS electro haze of Trevor Something's releases. Some tracks also blur into a "High Tides" style of distortion which are dreamily pleasant too:

Monday, December 28, 2015

Tuesday, December 22, 2015

Future Unlimited - Offbeat Music Vol. 2

While trying to track down individual songs and remixes from Future Unlimited's "Offbeat Music, Vol. 2",



I found the video for Ryan Paris - Dolce Vita:


 It's a catchy, carefree 80's track, but what jumps out immediate from the comments section is the contrast between people of the 80s and the modern era, encapsulated by comments like these:

 That was the life 1983 was really a dolce vita. Now we have this dark world with tech every where.


Other point to the lack of wearable technology that people defer to when they're uncomfortable, nervous, or bored. Interesting to think that we're living in a non-stylized cyberpunk dystopia the 80's themselves imagined.

Saturday, November 14, 2015

Sunday, August 30, 2015

GUNSHIP - Synthwave

Interesting not only for the fact John Carpenter narrates the introduction to GUNSHIPS track "Technoir" claymation music video, but also for the overall vocal synthwave sound UK based GUNSHIP produces for their album. 


Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/gunshipmusic








 Also worth listening to are the remixes by Carptner Brut, and Makeup & Vanity Set.

Friday, July 31, 2015

High Tides ~ ~ ~ Chillwave

High Tides self-titled 1st release is some very relaxing tropical/coastal sounding chillwave (in the vein of Tycho) with a touch of TOBACCO's Psychrock and some wonderful nowave styled looping mixed in.



The pre-release tracks (Coastal Cruise '86, and Sunware) compromised my go-to soundtrack this summer, and I can't recommend High Tides enough:




Five of the tracks even have custom music videos that use recycled vintage 8mm-style beach videos from the 1960s-1980s to further shape the beach aesthetic High Tides flows with. It's a nice touch.

Interestingly enough, some early versions of the tracks are available on a near-forgotten Soundcloud account, but have been primarily released through Rad Cult (Tobacco's label) on their Soundcloud.


The only substantial presence this has is on BandCamp - so go buy this now, as it's worth appreciating in levels beyond the 128k MP3 preview quality.

Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Visage - Fade To Grey (Bassheads 7'' remix)



 I hadn't heard this in a few years - Visage - Fade To Grey (Bassheads 7'' remix) it was my go-to mix of Fade to Grey when I use to DJ a few years ago.