Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Metamorph, Resurgence (feat. Dimi Kaye), Coastal Dreams, Stuck on You, Defender, Midnight Rush, Starion, Surge (feat. Space Tourist), and 12 more. , and , . Purchasable with gift card Buy Digital Discography $21.74 USD or more (25% OFF) Send as Gift credits released March 7, 2021 license all rights reserved tags Tags 80's 80s electronic dance darkwave outrun synthwave vaporwave Florida Shopping cart total USD Check out about Midnight Fury Florida
Synthwave (also known as Outrun, Retrowave, or Future synth) is a particular aesthetic that draws a lot of inspiration from the 1980s. While it does often get lumped in with Vaporwave, there are significant differences between the two genres. While it is particularly regarded as a musical genre, there are examples of synthwave in movies, TV shows, art, and video games. The genre is credited as being started by acts such as College, Kavinsky, and Justice, although a fair argument could be made that the first big mainstream album evoking the Synthwave vibe and aesthetic could be traced back to the sophomore Daft Punk album, Discovery.
The music strongly shares some key traits within the French House/Italo Disco musical genres. The true proto-synthwave acts came from musical scores of films in the 1980s created by the likes of John Carpenter (Halloween, The Thing, They Live, etc.), Vangelis (Blade Runner), and Tangerine Dream (Firestarter). While the genre has started to dip in popularity slightly, there is still a very devoted following and a lot of musicians still sell decently.
Synthwave movies tend to look like movies that would've been popular back in the 1980s and some have even seen widespread theater releases. Some synthwave movies and TV shows include TRON, Kung Fury, The Wraith, Drive, Manborg, Hobo With a Shotgun, Turbo Kid, Thor: Ragnarok (yes, THAT Thor: Ragnarok), Stranger Things, It Follows, Ready Player One, Commando Ninja, and Blood Machines.
If any medium can compete with movies and TV in terms of taking on the synthwave aesthetic, it's video games. While most synthwave video games look like games that could've been played on an original Nintendo, there are some that have very polished next-gen graphics. Examples of Synthwave video games include Hotline Miami, Hotline Miami 2, Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, Saturday Morning RPG, Trials of the Blood Dragon, Neon Drive, Power Drive 2000, Furi, Katana ZERO and Double Dragon Neon.p.
With themes like dark landscapes and celestial bodies (sunsets anyone?), synthwave aesthetics pair neatly with recent revived interest in space and space travel (thank you Daddy Elon, lol). Images of lonely astronauts floating alone in a gridded digital landscape, on faraway empty planets with foreign sunsets, convey both escapism and a sense of progress. This subgenre is characterized by a lack of civilization and space exploration-related imagery, such as astronauts, spaceships, planets and other celestial bodies, nebulas and galaxies, etc.
Other subgenres include dreamwave, darksynth, and scifiwave.[7] Journalist Julia Neuman cited "outrun", "futuresynth", and "retrowave" as alternative terms for synthwave[5] while author Nicholas Diak wrote that "retrowave" was an umbrella term that encompasses 1980s revivalism genres such as synthwave and vaporwave.[16] Darksynth is influenced by horror cinema.[21] Invisible Oranges wrote that darksynth is exemplified mainly by a shift away from the bright "Miami Vice vibes" and "French electro house influences" and "toward the darker electronic terrains of horror movie maestro composers John Carpenter and Goblin" also infused with sounds from post-punk, industrial and EBM.[22]
Synthwave originates from the mid-2000s[23] or late 2000s.[4] Diak traced the genre to a broader trend involving young artists whose works drew from their childhoods in the 1980s. He credited the success of the 2002 video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City with shifting "attitudes toward the '80s ... from parody and ambivalence to that of homage and reverence", leading directly to genres such as synthwave and vaporwave.[16] The influence of Vice City was also noted by MusicRadar.[10] Molly Lambert of MTV noted the song "Love on a Real Train" by Tangerine Dream in the film Risky Business (1983) was a major influence, with "ornately repetitive synth patterns, hypnotic chimes, and percussive choogling drum machines".[14]
The mid-2000s French house acts David Grellier (College), and Kavinsky, who had created music in the style of 1980s film scores, were among the earliest artists to be part of the emergence of synthwave.[5] Key reference points for early synthwave included the 1982 film Blade Runner (both the soundtrack and the film itself), 8- and 16-bit video games, 1980s jingles for VHS production companies, and television news broadcasts and advertisements from that era.[4] According to NME and MusicRadar, the 2011 film Drive was a major influence on synthwave, and included a track by Kavinsky, "Nightcall" in the film's soundtrack,[24][10] as well as David Grellier, Johnny Jewel, and several tracks by Cliff Martinez.[10] EDM.com described Kavinsky as a "synthwave pioneer",[25] while the horror blog Bloody Disgusting describes Carpenter Brut as a "synthwave icon".[26]
In the early 2010s, the synthwave soundtracks of films such as Drive and Tron: Legacy attracted new fans and artists to the genre.[7] Drive featured Kavinsky's "Nightcall" and, with College, "A Real Hero", which catapulted synthwave into mainstream recognition and solidified its stature as a music genre.[4] The genre's popularity was furthered through its presence in the soundtracks of video games like Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon and Hotline Miami, as well as the Netflix series Stranger Things, which featured synthwave pieces that accommodated the show's 1980s setting.[4][27] Nerdglow's Christopher Higgins cited Electric Youth and Kavinsky as the two most popular artists in synthwave in 2014.[12]
In the mid-2010s, "fashwave" (a portmanteau of "fascist" and "synthwave")[8] emerged as a largely instrumental fusion genre of synthwave and vaporwave, with political track titles and occasional soundbites, such as excerpts of speeches given by Adolf Hitler.[28] The phenomenon was described as self-identified fascists and alt-right members appropriating vaporwave music and aesthetics.[29][30] Elsewhere, there was a growing trend of Russian synthwave musicians whose work espoused nostalgia for the Soviet Union, sometimes described as "Sovietwave".[31]
In 2016, British band The 1975 released the critically acclaimed synthwave-influenced track "Somebody Else". The track comes as their third single for their second album, I Like It When You Sleep, for You Are So Beautiful yet So Unaware of It. It has been cited as a major influence on many contemporaries' work, such as Lorde, Tate McRae and Olivia Rodrigo.
Synthwave remained a niche genre throughout the 2010s. In 2017, PC Gamer noted that synthwave influences were to be felt in early 2010s gaming releases, primarily of the "outrun" subgenre, including Hotline Miami and Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon.[20] Writing in 2019, PopMatters journalist Preston Cram said, "Despite its significant presence and the high level of enthusiasm about it, synthwave in its complete form remains a primarily underground form of music."[4] He added that "Nightcall" and "A Real Hero" remained "two of only a small number of synthwave songs produced to date that widely known outside the genre's followers."[4]
In 2020, "Blinding Lights", a synthwave-influenced song by R&B artist the Weeknd[33][34] topped US record charts, the first song to do so during the COVID-19 pandemic.[35] Matt Mills of Louder wrote in 2021 that the genre "had exploded into the mainstream, cramming dancefloors and soundtracking blockbusters."[36]
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