Thankfully, the EP’s release coincides with that of a Vapor Edition and Remix album featuring Caspro, Bart Graft, Eyeliner , Xennon and Donor Lens (featured below).

Wether it is for its original tracks or its equally impressive alternate versions, Deuce is a grand slam that you simply shouldn’t miss.

OSC ‘Deuce’, ‘Deuce : The Remixes’ and ‘Deuce: Vapor Edition’ are out via Bandcamp and Spotify via TimeSlave Recordings.

Terrabot by Waveshaper

Waveshaper ‘Terrabot’ is out now via Bandcamp

SAILORWAVE III by MACROSS 82-99

Macross 82-99 ‘Sailorwave III’ is out now via Bandcamp

Infinity by Euan Ellis

Euan Ellis ‘Infinity’ is out now on bandcamp

« Nostalgic, dramatic and not short on synth, my 2nd album is the kind of album that takes you on a journey to cosmic space stories and to the brave new world, this planet is becoming these days. »

To anyone with any leftover apprehensions towards the Sovietwave sound, ‘1984? Нет!’ is yet another impeccably produced chance to fall in love with the sounds of interstellar nostalgia.

‘1984? Нет!’ is out now via Bandcamp.

Capgras’ Delusion: The delusion that family, friends and others have been replaced by imposters.

Frustrated as some retroheads may be at seeing their supposedly niche newsfeed flooded by “mainstream pop artist” The Weeknd, it seems like the Toronto artist intends to extend his stay in your discussion boards.

Having shot his way to superstardom with a series of dark, drugged-out R&B EPs (retroactively compiled as Trilogy in 2012), Abel Tesfaye’s wildly successful musical output remained largely undiscussed within the Retrowave scene. That is, until November of 2019 when he released ‘Blinding Lights’ the synth-driven second single to his fourth album ‘After Hours’. From then on, the artist became a dangerously hot topic of discussion throughout Reddit threads and Facebook groups, opposing fans of the song and those who feared a kind of appropriation or bastardization of their beloved scene through “mainstream exposure”.

Back in 2020, we took a deep dive through the Weeknd’s musical, lyrical and conceptual output and its long-standing commonalities with and nods to the retrowave scene, from his debut to After Hours. A couple of years and a handful of Covid variants later, we’re now greeted with a fifth full-length album. Announced as a conceptual counterpart and follow-up to After Hours, Dawn FM dropped on the first week of January, most likely with hopes to coincide with a new hopeful chapter for humanity in 2022.

So what’s in store for the retro synth enthusiast on this new record?

In many ways, a great deal of what made After Hours’ appeal to retroheads carries over to Dawn FM. Amongst the most promising features in this record is the return of Vaporwave pioneer Daniel Lopatin (aka Oneohtrix Point Never, aka Chuck Person), who is credited on no less than thirteen of the album’s sixteen tracks (compared to a mere three in fourteen on After Hours).

Dawn FM picks up from After Hours with a radio station jingle and voiceover announcement by Jim Carrey stating ‘You’ve been in the dark for way too long, it’s time to walk in the light’. Conceptually, the record places Abel in a mysterious state of purgatory bliss, on the way to a bright afterlife. Sonically, this translates into a cohesive blend of new eighties pop influences, disco flair, subtle wafts of vapour and a fair share of French touch strung together in a continuous flow. Dawn FM will keep you in a smooth cruising mood all throughout its runtime.  The album’s first single ‘Take My Breath’ even appears in a slightly extended version, foreshadowed and blended into the tracklist as it would in a DJ set.

The album’s second single ‘Gasoline’, launches the album with a slick, Pet Shop Boys throwback to eighties Britpop whose momentum carries over throughout the entire album.

Whereas After Hours struck the neon retro nerve with its singles, Dawn FM aims for a more pristine disco touch evocative of Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories. ‘Sacrifice’ even hits the tail end of ‘Take My Breath’ with some old-school Daft Punk club sounds with its flanged acid bassline. The track paves the way for an interlude featuring Quincy Jones that practically feels like a pastiche of ‘Giorgio by Moroder’, in which the producer narrates his troubled relationships with women. Impressive as this feature may be, one may question the attempt to draw further parallels with Michael Jackson through Quincy Jones’ notorious track record of abuse.

The next track ‘Out of Time’, will no doubt go down as the album’s most controversial track in the retrowave community due to its sampling of Japanese “City Pop” track ‘Midnight Pretenders’ by Tomoko Aran. Some have expressed severe disapproval of the song’s sampling by such a large-scale artist, whereas others seem to welcome the exposure it might bring to the City Pop phenomenon. Considering Lopatin’s credit on the track, it most likely was meant as a nod to the Vaporwave community and its extended family. As a pioneer in the genre, Lopatin’s influence is what sparked interest in sampling and digging up eighties pop from Japan, leading many to stumble upon City Pop albums through the Youtube recommendations bar. The resulting track is an obvious Michael Jackson pastiche with one of the album’s strongest hooks.

Despite the ambition as a radio broadcast concept and the occasional lyrical and stylistic throwbacks, Dawn FM ultimately feels less fleshed out than its predecessors.

It seems like Abel’s collaborators and the album’s heavy pop sensibility have led him to cut down on the corny puns and punchlines, though it comes at the expense of the Dawn FM’s narrative and worldbuilding. What’s left are little more than the same rehashed lyrics about wild sex and drugs, somewhat toned down and made less overt for the sake of commercial radio appeal. Despite us hearing his story through his perspective, Abel’s reflection on his past actions paint the portrait of an immature, toxic individual with a little insight on what makes him such a broken person. Every single Weeknd song is addressed to a girl he wants to, used to or regularly has sex with, the song ‘Best Friends’ serving as the final piece of evidence to prove this theory.

Chorus:
Oh, what we got
Baby, what we got is secure
Been a part of toxic love
It tore us apart
Things you want, I’m not lookin’ for
You’re my best friend now

Oh, I don’t want to be responsible
For your heart if we fall
‘Cause I’ll get clumsy and tear it apart
I love you so, but we can’t get close
You’re my best friend now

(Source Genius)

For an album set in the afterlife, it is surprising to note that there is nothing that The Weeknd hasn’t already told in greater detail in a previous album. The albums’ skits serve more as vacuous statements than narrative tools, with Jim Carrey’s verbose interventions quickly falling into obnoxious territory, culminating in a particularly underwhelming outro that misses its mark and closes the album on a benign, fake-deep message of hope.

For all of its flaws, Dawn FM is an enjoyable listen that has a fair share for retro-hungry fans to sink their teeth into, though fewer standout tracks to fawn over. The dissonant, psychedelic sonic textures provided by Oneohtrix Point Never provide an intriguing, bold aesthetic to the songs and add a sarcastic edge to the Weeknd’s deeper dive into pop music commercialism. Whether or not you believe The Weeknd singing radio jingles is to be taken at face value, there is definitely something off about the way it sounds and a fair reason to believe some of Lopatin’s sarcastic views on pop music commercialism have crept into the album. Not that it amounts to much of a subversive statement. From its very inception, Dawn FM was set out to be a widely commercialized record by today’s top streaming artists, with songs written and produced by Max Martin. Nonetheless, one cannot help but feel something deliberately artificial and uncanny about the retro sounds on the album, a sort of Capgras delusion where the pastiche has replaced the original eighties.

Engineered by Astral Tales, Cryostasis™ offers a unique experience beyond time, beyond the confines of our limited lifespan in a world of endless possibilities. Our cryochambers offer the highest level of comfort modern cryonics has to offer, guaranteeing the blissful rest of a lifetime.

Our oneiric support staff is on standby 24/7 in case of subconscious turbulences in order to make sure your deep dive into the dream world remains as relaxing and pleasant as possible.

Get ready to float through immaculate landscapes of pure light, into the astral spheres, witness the heavenly interstellar lullabies, waltz around the effervescent rays of Polaris and meet your soul’s ultimate fulfilment at Horizon’s End.

Take a step back, step out and let Astral Tales show you what life beyond life has to offer.

Cryostasis by Astral Tales

Sweet Dreams and enjoy the journey, whatever your destination may be.

Astral Tales’ ‘Cryostasis’ is available now on Bandcamp and Spotify.

After nearly early years of waiting, Vincent Belorgey’s undead night drifter persona has once again risen to deliver some high speed, French thrills.

Renegade hits off with a violent, slapping beat on a steady groove and features a grandiose, larger-than-life chorus delivered by Brooklyn-based musician and producer Cautious Clay. After Daft Punk and Gesaffelstein’s big singles featuring The Weeknd, ‘Renegade’ firmly sets the upcoming comeback record Reborn in this new decade of Rnb-driven French touch production whilst retaining the core Kavinsky blueprint.

The Parisian producer even appears to start off this new chapter with a nod to his genre-defining debut album with the line “I’m on the run with you”.

If that’s anything to go by, it looks like the new Kavinsky record is going to deliver all that the retrowave scene has been yearning for the past decade.

Now rejoice, tune in and groove out to the sound of a king back on his throne.

Kavinsky ‘Renegade’ is out now on all streaming platforms.

Check out ‘Inner Speech’ on Bandcamp, Spotify and other streaming platforms

Electric Youth collaborate with Refn again, but this time with a very eerie record that really plays heavily on the synth side of their sound. Thoughts…

First off, in what context did this newest project come into existence?
I was a child of the 80s. Although I played in metal bands, I really listened to mostly New Wave. I had always wanted to make New Wave music, but already had musical projects going that were much heavier and couldn’t find a good place to fit in. I just ended up creating lots of demos that got buried in time.

I released a Sci-Fi novel a few years ago, called “Blackstar” which was based off themes from my Celldweller album “Wish Upon a Blackstar.” I decided that I wanted to score for the novel to help people get into a vibe while they read the book. I knew this was finally my excuse to start making some of the 80s synthesizer music I had loved, so that’s what I did.

The “Blackstar” album was instrumental and after it was done I knew I wanted to take the next step and do more blatantly 80s styled music, but with vocals. Scandroid was born. Now I finally had the excuse I needed to cover “Shout” by Tears for Fears like I had been wanting to do since I heard the song on US radio in 1985. (I just finished shooting a music video for this song, which will be out mid-November.)

 So this debut album has been 3 years in the making, with the first single dating back to 2013. Why such a gap between the singles and the album release?
I was fitting Scandroid in between many other projects, so I would get a single done, then move onto a bunch of other things until I had another window to work on another song. Between my other musical projects (Celldweller & Circle of Dust) my audio software company (Refractor Audio) Clothing company (Outland) and my Record label (FiXT) there is always a lot to do. I also scored a full feature film (The Dunes) during this time as well as worked on scores for other feature films (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – Out of the Shadows, The Last Witch Hunter and the upcoming Deepwater Horizon to name a few.)

Has this shift towards a new, retro-oriented aesthetic present itself as a challenging one or merely a change of atmosphere and setting?
I don’t find it as much of a challenge, but rather an oasis in my desert. I actually have so much fun creating Scandroid, because any musical restrictions I put on myself for my other projects are lifted, and I can make this anything I want. I’ve been wanting to make this music SINCE the 80s, so you can imagine how happy I was to finally hit a point in my career where I could justify doing it. The timing worked out perfectly too since there is such an incredible resurgence the 80s sound and style coming back into popular culture. If Doc Brown were here right now, I believe he’d say “GREAT SCOTT!!”

Could you tell us a little more about the changes in setup (software/hardware) you’ve had to make specifically for the needs of this project?
I was really excited to change my production arsenal for this album. I deliberately wanted to use all my hardware synthesizers and drum machines. I used my modular synthesizers a bit, but most of the sounds on the album were generated from classic synthesizers like my Roland Juno 106 and Juno 60, 2 Sequential Circuits Prophet 600s, Alesis HR16 Drum Machine and Roland System 100M. I used some of my new synthesizers as well (Dave Smith and Tom Oberheim OB-6, Korg MS20 Mini  & Yamaha Reface CS, which is a recreation of the classic CS-80 made popular in Vangelis’ “Blade Runner” score.)

I used a few of my old cassette 4 tracks for sound design, which i’ve missed quite a bit. Everything does sound so digital now that I had forgotten all the things I loved (and hated) about cassettes. I cracked out a bunch of old guitar pedals too for some live guitar and basslines on the album.

I didn’t do much sound design with software at all. Most software was just for mixing, like EQs and Reverbs. The beautiful part of it was I would dial in a sound and then record it in. I couldn’t change it much after that so it forced me to commit to my decisions, which helped me write the songs more quickly than normal.

The album seems to carry a few underlying themes throughout. Can you elaborate a little more about what the album is about? Would it be fair to call this a concept-record?
It would be fair to say that. I never start thinking “I’m going to make a concept album” but unfortunately I can’t help but create worlds. Since my childhood I’ve had a very active imagination and when I started making music I was creating sounds for imaginary visuals that I was seeing in my head. World building was something I naturally gravitated towards when I created music so my albums generally do tend to be themed and conceptual.

I have a few storylines on the album. A main character “Red” (who happens to be my clone, 500 years in the future.) He lives in old Tokyo and Neo–Tokyo is a rebuilt version of the city that hovers above old Tokyo. Only the elite and rich can afford to live in Neo-Tokyo so Red, walks the empty streets of old Tokyo, surviving alone. He finally does meet his love interest, Aphelion and a few songs are interactions between them. At the same time the common worker androids of the day hit a critical moment in time, where one android ATOM 7K becomes sentient. He then seeks to wake another android, E.E.V. so together they can begin waking the other androids from their robotic slumber, freeing them from the slavery the humans have put them under. Unfortunately it sounds a lot more trite when I type out these descriptions, but when you listen to the album it will make much more sense 🙂

Given your multiple active projects, what can one expect from Klayton after the release of this record?
I’ve just finished a new album for my first musical project I had in the 90s “Circle of Dust.” It’s a much more guitar oriented album, with it’s roots in industrial music, which I loved in the 80s & 90s as well.

There will be a new Scandroid release in 2017.  I’ve already got great remixes from Waveshaper, Dance with the Dead, GosT, Pylot, Daniel Deluxe and Dnotive. I am working on some brand-new unreleased tracks and will be releasing what I hope to be a full length album mid next year.

There are a few Celldweller singles awaiting release and full documentary “Start of an Empire” which documents the making of my last Celldweller album “End of an Empire.” There is film score work coming up for me as well, which will keep me busy. Never a dull moment in my world and I wouldn’t have it any other way. 🙂

To finish off : Could you name (one of) your favorite Album, Movie and Book?
Favorite album, The Cure – Disintegration
Favorite Movie – Blade Runner
Favorite Book – Dune by Frank Herbert