POPSCENE
Synthwave
YOUR AT-A-GLANCE GUIDE TO SOME OF OUR FAVOURITE SUB-GENRES
THE TURBO-CHARGED SYNTH-POP SUB-GENRE WITH AN EYE FOR THE BIG SCREEN AND ONE HAND ON AN ARCADE JOYSTICK
M
o
re than any other musical sub-genre, synthwave is retrofuturistic. It mines the sheeny sounds and luminescent colours of the 80s, while also anticipating a near-future predicated on cutting-edge technology and Ferrari Testarossas speeding around neon-soaked cit yscapes.
Moreover, it’s as much about music as it is about film, with some retro gaming thrown in for the ride; whether that’s emulating the scenery and sounds of the arcade classic
Out Run
or taking notes from John Carpenter’s
Assault On Precinct 13
, watched on a VHS cassette tape, naturally.
Synthwave emerged in the mid- to late-Noughties, with a discernible though no less disparate scene establishing itself at the end of the MySpace era (is it any coincidence that a sub-genre built on nostalgia happened almost in tandem with the doom of the 2008 financial crisis?) Suddenly, monophonic analogue synthesis was hot, whether coming from Portland-based Johnny Jewel, under guises such as Chromatics, or a host of French musicians – who’d all been teenagers during the gore-core video boom of the late 80s – taking those trashy aesthetics and making them cool again.
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