Com Truise - Declination (Instrumental Track)

From the Hokokum game soundtrack - Declaination (instrumental) by Com Truise.

Original version with vocals by Joel Ford:

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.

 

Cool article about dancy synthwave artist COM TRUSE

MusicRadar has a cool interview with artist COM TRUISE.

Com Truise Remixes Mix

A fellow on YouTube posted a mix that compiles 24 different Com Truise remixes. 



It'd be great to hear some of these spun before Com Truise plays live at his Toronto gig (Feb 12th @ Wrongbar) this year.

Also worth listening to are two Com Truise tracks originally released in his 6th mixtape series Komputer Cast ("Surf" and "Subsonic"). Polished/redone versions of Subsonic can be found in Com Truise's next EP.

Memorex : Video Remix of your memories

Came across this through Boing-Boing.net:   Memorex from Smash TV.

The music is a mix of vintage audio, expertly mixed with modern retrowave/synthwave/chillwave tracks, with found footage from the 1980s/1990s edited to match.

 "The audio provides a perfect accompaniment to the warped and weirdly nostalgic footage, like finding your favorite cassette from childhood after it’s been baking in the sun for 25 years. An authentic audio/visual package, Memorex was designed to look and feel like the real deal. The ultimate VHS tape.
Is it a lost cultural relic, melted to the dash of an '83 Nissan Sentra? Is it a sinister government experiment, designed to brainwash children into becoming consumer slaves?
Is it the pinnacle of blipverts, sent back in time from 20 minutes into the future? Is it the holy grail of unlabeled VHS tapes, tucked away in the back room of an abandoned Blockbuster?
Is it live, or is it Memorex?
We didn't create your childhood, we just organized it for you. How to brainwash an entire generation. OBEY. CONSUME. THIS IS YOUR GOD."

Watching this super-cut presentation pop culture detritus, and knowing that it (subliminally) structured my childhood causes both nostalgia and horror.

COM TRUISE - Yxes (No Sexy Edit by Blayne)

COM TRUISE's IN DECAY album is excellent. However, one track 'Yxes' ('Sexy', backwards) has  particularly jarring breaks with a retro sounding "Sex-eeeee!" soundclip. I also wasn't a fan of the funky break it has near the end - so I chopped the song up, looped, reordered, re-EQ'd, and filtered it.

Remix and custom track art by Blayne Scott. Enjoy. :-)

Here's the original, for comparison:

A reflection on distorted memory

An excellent video mix for a Com Truise remix:

Just in case the culture-killing content removal police do succeed in axing this video-mix, here's the original track as well:



I have such an attraction to this sound/visual combination for a number of reasons. Foremost, I think it's gained traction among myself and others born in the '80s because growing up, were too young to actually *live* in the era. As a result of television, film & radio, we internalized much of the sound, images, and texture of the decade, right down to that desaturated, blurred VHS look everything seemed steeped in. I associate that feeling strongly with my childhood, as I'm sure others do. Every time I see a modern cellphone photo turned into a faux-polaroid by Instagram, I'm seeing a modern emulation of older media forms: we're reaching back to the pre-internet age 'golden age'. Why though?

Style and nostalgia, I think. Older things have that warmth that the cold digital age did away with. Looking at vintage computer ads from the 1990s, I can see the transition from one to the other. It's unsettling: What will be is presented in the typography, color and style of what was.


The affinity I have is a product of my own distorted memory. It was the mass consumerism and media saturation of the 1980's and early 1990's that generated so many of the symbols I associate with retrowave music: 'futuristic' concept cars, driving, lasers/"space!", neon pink/purple, specific fashion styles, variety shows, static, softened analog edges, laughably archaic video effects, etc.

Most people I've talked to who were teens or adults during this era didn't have much to say about it. In the same way, most of us aren't exactly nostalgic for the span of time between 2000 and 2010. It's just another sequence of time - the meaning we draw from it is constructed - a pastiche of remix of a pastiche. I'm content to realize that the deep love I have for the visuals and 'sound' of the 1980s are a desire for something that never truly existed.