Synthwave is funny, but I don't have any real affection for it because it lacked eros. Even though I like a lot of the original artists it borrows tropes from, the pecularity of synthwave is it does it all without any edge. It's the easiest of smooth listening, which I think is its point. Bret Easton Ellis wrote American Psycho about the very people original synthwave was written for in the 80's, and I suppose that's what makes it such an amazing and appealing retro movement today.
The music is like the bland, empty affect part of the Patrick Bateman character's outward personality, which only barely concealed the serial killer "depth" on his inside. Any edge in synthwave at all appears to be playing on this, where the smoother it is, the more meta and uncanny it seems, and with it the implication of extreme and bizzare hidden depths behind it. Like a David Lynch theme.
To me this makes synthwave perfect for the way millenials and younger people have had to manage their smooth social brand exterior in every concievable micro aspect of their lives, down to the organization of their bathrooms because it's all being competitively scrutinized for performance on video. When I hear synthwave, to me it is the soundtrack to embracing that insanity, which I don't have, but can appreciate.
Maybe people just like it, but that seems more insane than I'm really prepared to consider.
I'd like to start by saying you made a very good argument here, but I would like to make some comments of my own as someone who is absolutely infatuated with this genre. You mention that a lot of synthwave is easy listening, but ironically most of the synthwave artists I tend to enjoy are a lot more "hardcore" I'd list 'carpenter brut','dance with the dead' and 'master boot record' as some good counterexamples to what you described. As for the social aspect, many people agree that the movie 'Drive' really kicked off the modern synthwave movement with its soundtrack and how the music played into the actions of the main character. The interesting thing about that movie is that it exists in a world almost directly opposite of what you described as "smooth social brand exterior" all the characters are living in some form of grime or filth, and the main character is a socially stunted badass. This movie (atleast for me) really set the stage of what synthwave conveyed, its fantasy of what I was told growing up were better times. Hotline Miami is another piece of art that prominently uses the genre to convey harsh ultra violent scenes of death and destruction, the beat and tempo drive the player to move quickly and kill swiftly in these dingy crime infested apartment complexes. Because I was so heavily influenced by Drive and Hotline Miami I see the genre as this brooding soundtrack for antihero's, like the kind of music that plays when the protagonist does some horrible stuff and subsequently smokes a cigarette looking off into the distance trying to understand what they just did. I'll post some example tracks below of darker stuff that fits this ethos.
I'm also a Master Boot Record fan (and of his crypto puzzles), but he's more metal driven instead of the uncanny reflections of regular synthwave.
With you on the movie Drive as the aesthetic origin of the revival though. I'd still say that the mumblecore/normcore element of Drive is an expression of the same kind of psychopathic dull affect Ellis was writing about, except Drive was about working people struggling instead of city bankers.
I make a lot of music that is influenced by what happened outside and after that 80s synth genre, as I think what happened was the paralell thread of the 80s, which was holdovers from industrial and minimalist pioneers in the 70s influenced aphex twin, autechre, orbital, future sound of london, and eventually breaking through to the mainstream with underworld and chemical brothers.
There is a godawful almost secret album by Underworld when they were an 80s synth band, that captures the end of the synthwave moment just before they really became Underworld (pre dubnobasss) when synthy alt culture met dance/techno. My own stuff (in recent comment history) riffs on that transitional era between industrial, techno, punk, and what would become electronica. Super fun topic!
MBR is fantastic for lifting heavy things. I haven't ever engaged in any of the puzzles, but I do enjoy the obscure references to crufty old Windows tech. :)
I have to agree with you. For me synthwave guys like Peturbator, Danger, Carpenter Brut, am 1984 [0] et al (even com truise) conjure imagery like Blade Runner, Clockork Orange, Neuromancer, the anime world of Ghost in the Shell, driving alone late at night in an empty city, slow motion violence, and sex. Maybe both at the same time.
Perturbator is especially good at bridging synthwave with [0] industrial. I used to listen to a lot of Antigen Shift, Muted Logic, Cenotype, Formalkaline and Scrap.edx prior discovering this subgenre. I suppose being influenced by the frequent DNA Lounge attendance mostly contributed to this lean.
Dance with the Dead [1] also does this particular well along with Turbo Knight [2][3].
Hmm, this comment certainly has its own passionate "depth" of criticism, associating millennials and "younger people" with serial killers.
Do you think you might be projecting some of your own feelings or inner pains onto these groups? Or could it be that you have more to learn about even the complexity of others' inner feelings? It's a strangely broad brush to paint with...
If you have missed the point, it was that what makes the genre appealing is that the tension it expresses speaks to the dichotomy of private and public self, as exemplified by a character that resonated at the time the origins of the genre were written, and which is a tension that is defining to the experience of people today. Though this example of concrete thinking is fairly consistent with the effects of that tension.
> To me this makes synthwave perfect for the way millenials and younger people have had to manage their smooth social brand exterior in every concievable micro aspect of their lives
I think the popularity of Synthwave has a lot to do with the Stranger Things series, which used a lot of 80s nostalgia synths.
I think in it is the opposite way round: Synthwave seems to be nostalgia for a simpler time when technology was something people controlled, rather than now where it seems technology increasingly controls people.
The music is like the bland, empty affect part of the Patrick Bateman character's outward personality, which only barely concealed the serial killer "depth" on his inside. Any edge in synthwave at all appears to be playing on this, where the smoother it is, the more meta and uncanny it seems, and with it the implication of extreme and bizzare hidden depths behind it. Like a David Lynch theme.
To me this makes synthwave perfect for the way millenials and younger people have had to manage their smooth social brand exterior in every concievable micro aspect of their lives, down to the organization of their bathrooms because it's all being competitively scrutinized for performance on video. When I hear synthwave, to me it is the soundtrack to embracing that insanity, which I don't have, but can appreciate.
Maybe people just like it, but that seems more insane than I'm really prepared to consider.