‘See Me’ is out now via Bandcamp and Spotify

Favorite tracks : 授与な 事, Light Nude, Mirror Spit

Danny Scott Lane ‘Holy Goodnight’ is out now via Bandcamp.

Poolside by Jetfire Prime

Favorite tracks : Opening Up, Janitor, Pool Cleaner

 Jetfire Prime  ‘Poolside’ is out now via Bandcamp.

Favorite Tracks : Sun and the Moon ft.Elisa Devane, Pastel Skies

 L’Avenue ‘Riviera’ is out now via Bandcamp.

Pastel Graphics ‘Vector Feels’ is out now via Bandcamp

The Archaeologist is out now via Bandcamp and Spotify.

As one could expect, the album packs a heavy dose of streamlined tracks, with unapologetic pop hooks that hit right on target with the efficiency one can only expect from a Swedish songwriter. For fans of melodramatic eighties pop, FUSIONWAVE is the album you need to keep your cravings in check for the next few weeks.

FUSIONWAVE by HOLOFLASH

HOLOFLASH ‘FUSIONWAVE’ is out now on Bandcamp.

Along with the big announcement came the premiere of the album’s first single, which features artist Greg Puciato (The Black Queen/Killer Be Killed/ex-The Dillinger Escape Plan). Directed by French artist Dehn Sora, ‘Imaginary Fire’ expands on Carpenter Brut’s previous music video ‘Fab Tool’ with a hellish, Lovecraftian portrayal of Florida’s beaches.

The album’s pre-order page on bandcamp shows that the album will feature 12 songs whose titles forebode yet another round of unholy rites and merciless decadence.

1. Opening Title
2. Straight Outta Hell
3. The Widow Maker (feat. Gunship)
4. Imaginary Fire (feat. Greg Puciato)
5. …Good Night, Goodbye (feat. Ulver)
6. Day Stalker
7. Night Prowler
8. Lipstick Masquerade (feat. Persha)
9. Color Me Blood
10. Stabat Mater (feat. Sylvaine)
11. Paradisi Gloria
12. Leather Terror (feat. Johannes “Jonka” Andersson)

‘Leather Terror’will release on April 1^st, 2022 and  is now available for Preorder 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Capgras’ Delusion: The delusion that family, friends and others have been replaced by imposters.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.

For those unfamiliar with your work: where are you from and what is it that first drew you towards electronic music?

Hi, I’m Miles Matrix, a Synthwave / 80s Electro producer based in Vienna. I’m also a Synthwave DJ. I’ve been living in Vienna for about ten years now. I was born in Gibraltar but grew up in Germany after our family moved around Europe including France for a while.

I’ve been into electronic music all of my life really. Some of my first cassettes were 80s Electro, or “breakdance music”. I also had some cassette compilations where some artists covered popular tracks as synthesizer instrumental pieces, so I got into the sound very early. My taste in music is pretty eclectic, I am a huge Oasis fan too for example but electronic music has probably been the most steady constant in my life. I remember in the 90s, in my teens, I used to listen to recordings from the Love Parade and dance on my own to all the Techno, turning my desk light on and off again, to imitate a strobe.

The liner notes for LA BOUM mention a mixtape that introduced you to “Breakdance Music”. What brought you to consider fully embracing this sound for this latest album?

Yeah, that was a cassette a classmate of mine recorded for me in primary school. He was into breakdance, and while I couldn’t dance myself, I loved the music a lot. It was only years later I realized that was actually old-school electro, basically one of the origins of the dance music we listen to today. I never stopped loving the sound, and after a couple of albums where I was going for a more traditional Synthwave sound, now was the time for me to go down this route. And I must say I feel pretty happy on this road and I can imagine exploring this Electro sound even more on upcoming releases. There’s something very refreshing in this sound.

LA BOUM by Miles Matrix

Can you tell us a little about the gear you used to bring the 80s’ Electro sound back to life?

So I think the most important aspect in production was dedicating myself to some minimalism. As a synthwave producer, you tend to go all-in on FX and soundscapes, trying to be very cinematic or dark, which very often results in a million tracks in the DAW. Obviously, this approach wouldn’t be very authentic for a sound rooted in the 80s. But far more importantly it actually boosted my creative energies having to work with a limited amount of tracks. It forces you to focus on the essential parts of a song. It’s a challenge from a composition perspective as you can’t cheat your way around boring parts with “more FX / more pads / more sounds”.

My approach was to deconstruct what old-school Electro is made of. Essentially, it boils down to these parts: A groovy bassline, an infectious hook, reverb and delay, and most importantly: percussion. Electro gets its groove from an offbeat kick and the snare playing regularly on the 2 and 4. From there you can get really creative with hi-hats, cymbals, cowbell, rim shots and percussive effects. The percussion is the most important part of Electro.

In terms of gear, I had a hybrid approach. I composed a couple of my album songs on my Roland MC-101 and TR-08, giving them a finishing touch in my DAW. But also in the DAW I worked with authentic samples from the 808, 909, 727 and 505. The synths I used were nothing special because I was going for a raw sound, and based on the feedback so far, it really worked out.

Currently, I am working on translating the album to a hardware gear-only live set with my MC-101 and TR-08 and Monotribe. The concept is to have one continuous set and to that end, I am remixing every album song for a live performance to give it a bigger club touch. We are currently in lockdown but I can’t wait to perform the album live!

What are the aspects of NYC Club music and Breakdance music that hit you in ways that more modern dance or hip hop music fail to do?

I wouldn’t say “old music” is per se better or modern music worse. I listen to a lot of current electronic music. But I find myself returning to the “olden times” a lot. In terms of what I like to produce myself, this sweet spot in the 80s where acts like Newcleus, Egyptian Lover, Hashim and others were redefining electronic music, very much inspired by Kraftwerk on the one hand and disco and early hip hop culture on the other hand, this sweet spot really gets me. I love it.

Tell us a little about the songs ‘COUNTACH THIS!’ and ‘CUPCAKES’. What’s the story about these tracks about Lambos and Cupcakes?

Hahaha, it’s so funny to see the reactions to these particular songs. I know this is a very disappointing answer but there isn’t a huge story behind them, to be honest. Here’s the thing: When producing the instrumentals I tend to give them working titles, mostly some random word I come up with on the spot, which in this case was “Cupcakes” and “Lambo #5” respectively. And then I basically just started ad-libbing to the beats and that’s how the lyrics came about. I then sent them through a text-to-speech software and voilà. Countach this is of course a pun based on MC Hammer’s hit, but it just fit so perfectly. And Cupcakes, well, let’s just say I got carried away while ad-libbing…

If you were to book 5 artists from that classic 80s era for the perfect Breakdancing music night, who would you choose?

Damn, only 5??? That’s tough. I think I’d book Chris “The Glove” Taylor to DJ the night. I’d want Egyptian Lover, Newcleus and Cybotron to perform, with Ice-T emceeing the event. I think that would be so dope!

Closing off with the question I ask at the end of every interview: name one of your favorite albums, movies and books.

Tough again, haha. It always depends on the mood I’m in but I’ll give it a try. Album: The Crystal Method – Vegas. Movie: Jerry Maguire. Book: The Cartel Trilogy by Don Winslow!

Thanks to Miles Matrix for taking the time to answer our questions!

Miles Matrix ‘La BOUM’ is out now via Bandcamp and will be released on Spotify in December.

LA BOUM by Miles Matrix

The album strikes a clean balance between old-school Breakdance-oriented Electro-Funk and Club-oriented Dance beats and makes a strong case for one of the eighties’ more underappreciated subcultures, where style and attitude were the name of the game.  Whether you’re into flashy sportscars or have a serious (borderline psychotic) fixation on cupcakes, ‘LA BOUM’ has got you covered.

If your strain of eighties nostalgia includes memories of Afrika Bambaataa’s ‘Planet Rock’, Grandmaster Flash, Run DMC and Captain Rock, LA BOUM is most definitely the throwback party you’ve been waiting for. Standing still isn’t an option.

Favorite Tracks: KID MIDI, COMPUTERMUSIC

Miles Matrix ‘La BOUM’ is out now via Bandcamp and will be released on Spotify in December.