Wonderful synthwave mixes I didn't make

If I'd kept up making emotionally evocative synthwave dance mixes, they'd sound like those made by BenKaos. I love every one of them - take a listen:





More mixes here: https://soundcloud.com/benzin187


Tracklists:

Memory Tapes - Blue to Green Mix

A reoccurring favourite artist of mine who goes by Memory Tapes (and occasionally Weird Tapes) released another eclectic mix set:

https://soundcloud.com/memorytapes/blue-to-green-mix
When I met the artist during a small concert in Toronto, he commented that nothing on the internet is permanent. It exists, then is gone. For that reason, he rarely keeps his mixes posted for very long.

If you like this, or any of his other listed mixes via SoundCloud, be sure to save them offline using a any number of websites.

Memory Tapes - September

Nostalga

An short film titled "Nostalga" was posted on VIMEO recently that explores the different tangible expressions /representations of longing for the past.

It's interesting to note that even the visual presentation and editing emulates a VHS cassette - a piece of technology that simply isn't used any longer, but evokes deep feelings in those who wistfully remember them.

NOSTALGIES from PARACHUTES.TV on Vimeo.

During the video a word is mentioned, but without description: Saudade.

Saudade is a fascinating term, as it described an emotional state I've felt, but never had a word for until recently. "Nostalga", "Longing", or "wistful remembrance"  come close, but are still lacking. Saudade describes a deep emotional state of longing for something or someone that is absent - either in present or the past. This also applies to the sadness of future loss where the object of affection is present now but will be gone later.

A key difference between nostalga and saudade-seeped remembrance is the realization that the object(s) of your affection may never have existed in the way you remember them. It isn't simply the absence of a toy from your childhood, or a specific album you had long ago - it's the sadness that comes from realizing that you can never recapture the same set of circumstances and perception you once had. 

I've experienced this frequently as I listen to music and television - certain chords or sound  sets remind me of childhood listening experiences. However, I know those experiences are like dreams: think about them for too long, and they disappear like morning dew. All we're left with are the tangible pop culture detritus that triggered these feelings. 

The first time I encountered the term "Saudade" was in the comments section of an article which described a "lost cultural decade": what we view as "80s" or "retro" today. The article shouldn't be read literally (i.e: there's a 10 year span people stopped counting sometime between 1979 and 1992 called the "19A0s"). Instead, the article describes in a very strange way how the expression of nostalgic longing take on particular forms during this era. These expressions (triangles, particular patterns, imagery, colors, etc.) are sampled, recycled, and made new and familiar by writers, artists, and designers in their constant callbacks and pastiche. For current music and visual aesthetics, the 'warmth' of analogue technology (photos, video & music) is often cited as more attractive than the bleak stillness of our present digital environment. 

For individuals born in the 1980s, we experienced the cultural output of that decade in aftermath: reruns, rebroadcasts, and taped VHS recording showed us a window into a world we wanted to be apart of, but never really could.




As one commenter articulated, this caused "nostalgia for something that you never really knew [...] like something on the top of your tongue that you can't fully realize, and makes you sad."

"I always had the sense that there was a giant party going on without me.  It didn’t help to see A-ha cavorting about on MTV in a comic book world where I desperately hoped to join them, and knew I never could; Jem made me hunger for a brave new holographic world I knew didn’t exist, no matter how hard I wished it did.  Even today, I harbor some regret that my life doesn’t look like a John Foxx video [... It was an era spent] trying to catch the phantoms of a pop culture that both he and I were too young to understand yet still desperately wanted to internalize[.]"

For the consumer culture of the 1980s, I experienced a heavy dose of this feeling when watching television in the late 1980s, and early 1990s. Before the connectivity of the internet, North America had a shared multi-channel television culture. With limited viewing options, it had a one-sided homogenizing effect on those watching it. We passively watched and internalized what we were shown without response. The repetitive nature of the analogue edited sound and visuals of pre-internet cable TV was reassuring and comfortable to many.



SMASHTV's Video mix sets are a supercut of '80s/'90s commercials set over top of similar music. The repetitive expressions of VHF-broadcast culture: station idents, clumsy advertisements, and cartoons carry heavily nostalgic cache. They were all sandwedged between television's assurance that they'd be back after "these messages". Decades later, I believe those "messages" aren't the ones they intended. The products and shows advertised are long gone - but the feelings they communicated remain.

For earlier decades, modern music like Belbury Poly on the label "GhostBox" mimics "the electronic avant garde of the 60's-80's period to generate a sense of disquieting nostalgia." BoingBoing.net is an avid fan of framing this style of music as haunting tunes from a "parallel world". The description is appropriate: Much of this music sounds like it comes from a hazy, half-remembered memory that occurred between 1970 and 1992 - an era I've heard  wistfully called "The Long Eighties".







All of this nostalgia comes with a flip-side:  Do we spend our years revelling in what was, rather than what will be?

An interesting post on 'The Golden Age syndrome' is worth reading. It looks at the wider implications of (western) culture and it's reliance on recycled pastiche of it's own past. The author rightly asks "What other generation spent its youth, money, energy, and talents denying its own time?"

I feel that our nostalgic longings for representations of the past come from a similarity of expression: our own memories have no clean edges. The way we store experiences and emotion are imperfect, and subject to unanticipated change over time.  To those who grew up with the warmth of CRT-tube static, the still sharpness of a high-definition television's blue screen unintentionally alienates us.

Time will tell if musical and aesthetic interests of future generations will continue to look back and reinterpret memories of our analogue past - or embrace the singularity-like world to be.

For more saudade-inducing content, I'd suggest:

A discussion on the original term @ NPR:
Saudade: An Untranslatable, Undeniably Potent Word

Imagery:

http://ffffound.com/
http://vhsdreamz.tumblr.com/archive

Music:
http://arawa.fm/

http://weirdtapes.blogspot.com/

Sources of Dreamwave

One of the few uses I have for Facebook is to access an RSS feed-like updates to various graphic artists and music groups.

One of the best gateways to what's available in the genre of 80's-esk modern music is "The Future Sound of the Past":
https://www.facebook.com/TheFutureSoundofthePast

It's well worth subscribing to if you're interested in seeing Dreamwave / Space Synth-wave / Electronic Dreams / Gold Funk / and Film Soundtrack posts in your news feed, and less into photos of what people had for dinner.

Purity Ring

Purity Ring was brought to my attention by Bruce Lord from I Die:You Die, proving to me that his musical taste continues to be pretty excellent.


Puirty Ring - Amenamy



I'd heard of the band's before, but it was typically associated with Wichhouse / indie dark electronica's low-fi crowd - and that carries with it a whole hipster-pagan, Triangles & Unicode crowd. I enjoy alot of that music, but feel pidgeon holing this band misses the point.

Once I had the chance to listen to their album SHRINES, I was humming it for days. Purity Ring's tracks, if I had to assign a category, fall somewhere in the realm of expertly crafted electropop. The dark, surreal lyrical content works really well with the synth. It's hard to define music like by what's come before - and like my thoughts on "Chillwave" artists, it's probably better for that.

Image credit above goes to a Spin article about the band - well worth checking out. While live, the vocals sometimes land a bit flat, the overall performance with their DIY setup looks pretty neat.

I'll certainly be keeping an eye out on Purity Ring's Facebook page to see when they'll next visit Toronto.

 Purity Ring - Shrine


Purity Ring - Crawlersout

Purity Ring - "Crawlersout" from Tom Beal on Vimeo.

Purity Ring - Lofticries

Black Marble, Telefon Tel Aviv, and Mortality

With it's minimal-synth/coldwave sound, the music of Black Marble is pretty catchy. What hooked me initially was some similarity between his track "A Great Design", and Telefon Tel Aviv's "Your Mouth.



"Your Mouth", and the 9 other tracks on "Telefon Tel Aviv's "Immolate Yourself" were so very different from their previous IDM-ish tunes. This was the final album by TTV, as Charles Cooper (who did the vocals, and mixing, if I remember correctly), died in 2009.

Music, and people's attachment to particular songs or albums are often keyed to specific events, sights, and feelings, anchored in time. In January 2009, I was working in a seaside town in South Korea. I would finish work each night around 11pm. During the walk home, the streets were empty, and my mind filled with uncertain feelings about decisions I'd made, and the path forward. Listening to the tracks on 'Immolate Yourself' gave me a great sense of peace during that time, reminding me of how much I loved my life. At the same time, the somber, dream-like nature of TTV's tracks made me feel nostalgic for the present - a reminder that nothing lasts forever. 

I found out about Cooper's death while listening to this track, standing in an empty street, staring at my phone. It was an odd experience - a reminder of my own mortality, certainly - but it reinforced my desire to treasure the present, rather than preemptively mourn it's passing.

I listened to TTV's final album, (and the remixes they released during that time) consistently throughout my time overseas. For this reason, I'm always excited to come across new music that carries certain similarities to the tracks on "Immolate Yourself". While Black Marble is far more minimal wave, with harsh, highly sequenced '80s synth, I really appreciate the vocals and mixing style.

   

Another track that trips similar somber newwave sentiments with me is Belong's "Perfect Life". It holds hands with English Shoegaze & ambient, evoking bits of New Order's "Elegia", or Joy Division's "Atmosphere".




Belong @ SoundCloud:
https://soundcloud.com/belong_music

Black Marble @ SoundCloud:
https://soundcloud.com/blackmarble

Telefon Tel Aviv's Immolate Yourself @ Last.fm:
http://www.last.fm/music/Telefon+Tel+Aviv/Immolate+Yourself

Displaced mix by Memory Tapes [update]

[Update:] This is odd - the original mix, titled "Displaced Mix" was removed by Memory Tapes, and replaced with a similar mix, same artwork, but titled 'Replacement Mix'. No idea why, but it's equally good, if not better:

[Update 2:] Got a reply from the artist, and he removed the original 'Displaced Mix' because one of his remixes was of another artists work whose album was still unreleased. All the same, I wish I'd had the foresight to save that mix. It worked really well together.

Still, 'Replaced mix' is a nice combination of of rarities, B-sides, remixes, and unreleased tracks by Memory Tapes. Check out his music blog that has a surprising amount of free music.

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.

DJ Blayne Mixtape: Memory (2012)

Memory Mix (2012) by thisstuffiswonderful

DJ Blayne's : Memory 2012 (Mix Tape):
A mix of chillwave, electro-ambient, and electro-synthpop I find emotionally evocative.

CLICK TO DOWNLOAD (Free MP3)

1. Aslan Osiris - When Our Moon Falls vs. Tycho - Ascension [DJ B Edit]
2. Apparat - Arcadia (Telefon Tel Aviv Remix)
3. Telefon Tel Aviv - The Birds [DJ B Edit]
4. M83 - I Guess I'm Floating
5. Kevin Shields - Goodbye (Lost In Translation OST)
6. Cool Angels - Don't Feel Like Holding On (Ft. Stef Hodapp) [DJ B edit]
7. Memory Tapes - Run Out
8. Telefon Tel Aviv - Helen of Troy
9. Gypsy & the Cat - Time to Wander (Joan of Arc Remix)
10. DIIV - Follow (Memory Tapes Remix)
11. Eight and a Half - When I was Twenty Nine
12. M83 - Slight Night Shiver
13. Tycho - A Walk

Mix also streaming on Mixcloud:

DJ Blayne - Memory 2012 Mix Tape by Djblayne on Mixcloud

If you like the artists included in this set, buy their music. Some tracks are already available for free (Soundcloud) or for purchase (via Bandcamp). Mixtape created using Adobe Soundbooth and Premier.

-DJ Blayne 
[ blaynescott@gmail.com ]
http://events.dark-ware.org

DJ Blayne Mixtape: Retrowave & Other Futuristic Music

The Hope That Was - Mixtape by thisstuffiswonderful


DJ Blayne's : Retrowave & Other Futuristic Music (Mix Tape):

Current artists whose songs evoke an '80s futuristic sound 

CLICK TO DOWNLOAD (Free MP3)

1. Power Glove - Nightforce
2. ActRazer - We Own The Night
3. Mega Drive - Neo Tokyo 2019 [DJB Edit]
4. Thomas Barrandon - The Quiet Earth
5. Perturbator - There Is No Love Highway [DJB Edit]
6. Makeup and Vanity Set - A Glowing Light, A Promise (88:88 film score)
7. Steve Moore - Frigia [DJB Edit]
8. SquareWav - 4 AM Sunrise [DJB Edit]
9. Com Truise - Polyhurt
10. Maethelvin - Plan B
11. The Outrunners - Diamonds [DJB Edit]
12. Noir Deco - Fantisy Noir

If you like the artists included in this set, buy their music. Some tracks are already available for free (Soundcloud) or for purchase (via Bandcamp). Mixtape created using Adobe Soundbooth and Premier.

Update 2013: Now available for streaming from MixCloud:

The Hope That Was: Retrowave & Other Futuristic Music Mix by DJ Blayne by Djblayne on Mixcloud

-DJ Blayne 
[ blaynescott@gmail.com ]
http://events.dark-ware.org

Chillwave: Weird Tapes

The only music artist online that I'll consistently check for newly posted tracks is "Weird Tapes", and the his side project, "Memory Cassette".

As one blogger put it:

Feel like I might call it 'chill wave' music in the future. Feels like 'chill wave' is dominated by 'thick/chill synths' while conceptual core is still trying to 'use real instruments/sound like it was recorded in nature.' Feel like chillwave is supposed to sound like something that was playing in the background of 'an old VHS cassette that u found in ur attic from the late 80s/early 90s.'

Is it possible to be nostalgic for memories that aren't your own? This occurred to me while listening to music associated with 'chillwave' artists like Memory Tapes recently.

Something about this artist (and perhaps the genre) strikes a chord in me. Listening to any tracks reminds me of memories I never had - a feeling that I've combined childhood perception with actual memories I had as a kid watching TV, or wandering around outside.

Listening to Weird Tapes/Memory Cassette/Memory Tapes as an adult bring about an intersection between the events of my childhood, and the mood/feelings I had during specific moments. It's hard to put into words, but I think that's why this music is such magic.

Also check out Weird Tapes earlier band, "Hail Social" - far more alt. rock, but you can see the beginnings of his style in many tracks.

http://weirdtapes.blogspot.com/
http://www.myspace.com/hailsocial

Be sure to dig through the Weird Tapes blog archive. 80% of his music is free to download, with the exception of some full EPs, which are available through iTunes, etc.

A good place to start is with a mixtape of his called "Walk me home". It's a combination of a few of his tracks, an expertly mixed .mp3 of your memories. :)

Update: I came across an interesting interview with the artist (Dayve Hawk) at Sterogum.

Chillwave: In Video

For other interesting examples of (what can loosely be defined as) Chillwave, visit the Videopage of Jamie Harley.

I discovered his (her?) work while browsing VIMO from an edited video they did mixed to a Weird Tapes track recently.

(S?)he's like the ideal art director of your imagined memories: using found footage/retro documentaries/arthouse footage combined with dreamy/chilled out songs by various artists I've never heard of - they craft something amazing.

Memoryhouse - Lately (Deuxième) from Jamie Harley on Vimeo.



Twin Shadow - "Castles In The Snow" from Jamie Harley on Vimeo.



Memory Tapes : "Today Is Our Life" from Jamie Harley on Vimeo.