Overnight, a grand drama has developed in the synth scene. The darksynth / electro producer CYBERTHING! was scrolling through Spotify to discover new music, when instead discovered the remnants of a digital heist! The alleged thief in this case had not stolen credit card numbers or bitcoin – but rather, music. Darksynth and cyberpunk to be exact – as well as album art.

It looks like the alleged thief manipulated the tracks so the Automatic Content ID system didn’t catch them. Cyberpunk indeed!

But this isn’t just a story of alleged theft – it’s also a story about how the larger synthwave community came together to identify the stolen tracks, notify the artists, and hunt down the perpetrator!

The Find

“I was just looking for new music.  I’m always looking for some new unnamed artists who can do something interesting….

So I found this guy’s ‘album’ and the first track was awesome (of course it was, cause it was Street Cleaner – Vultures) but I didn’t understand it right away, since the track was a little pitched down and sounded a lil different. But the second track was Perturbator lol. So I started to Shazam the tracks and made this Tweet after that.” – CYBERTHING!

The alleged perpetrator of this heist appears to be one “Electromedison.” They may also go by “DO.RE.MI.XX Production Story,” and/or “Cybershot.” It appears many of these albums and tracks have been up under false names for almost a year. 

We reached out to Electromedison for a comment, but at the time of this writing, we have had no response. 

Editors Note: We will not link to these “releases,” and we strongly discourage you from seeking out these releases too, as we do not want to give this alleged thief any money from streaming!

If you are a darksynth/cyberpunk artist and you’re worried your music may have been stolen, the unidentified tracks are listed at the bottom of this article, and most of the albums in question can be found on Electromedison’s Soundcloud, and they do not appear to be monetized there.

The Search Begins

Upon finding these maliciously uploaded tracks, CYBERTHING! spread the word on social media, tagging every artist who’s work he could identify. News spread like wildfire, and soon the fine folks over in Nightride FM’s discord channel had begun the hunt, finding and notifying many of the artists who had their work stolen. Eventually, DEADLIFE compiled and tweeted a list of the stolen tracks and the original artists the awesome Nightride FM community could identify.

Dozens of darksynth and cyberpunk artists and their labels are affected, including:

• Street Cleaner
•  Perturbator
•  MADES
•  Chaos Vector
•  Jack Maniak
•  Anacrhonist
•  Pomidor
•  Hexenkraft
•  Dreddd
•  Tokyo Rose
•  Graveslayer
•  Midnight Danger
•  Irving Force
•  Daniel Deluxe
•  Knightbots
•  Alex
•  Neon Nox
•  Nightcrawler
•  Tonebox
•  Compilerbau
•  Kick Puncher
•  Lazerpunk
•  VHS Glitch
•  Darkshine
•  F.O.O.L
•  Coderpunk
•  Sandman

In fact, it seems every single track from these releases was allegedly stolen, though there are still unidentified tracks.
(See the full list of stolen tracks below.)

It also appears the album art was also stolen, with one of them being identified as Steven Holliday’s Creepshow anniversary poster.

A number of artists also confided in me they believe they have found the original perpetrator, but we will not provide real names here, as we aren’t in the business of witch hunts. However, a friend-of-a-friend reached out to the person in question – and this was his response:

The Mystery Deepens

Haven’t heard of Electromedison? Us either – in fact, no one really has. This “artist” has zero social profiles. In spite of this, the pirated tracks have been spread all around the net: they’re on Spotify, Shazam, Itunes, Amazon, Beatport, TikTok, – you name it.

That’s actually why I’m writing this article – so artists who are affected can find their tracks and be sure to report them on their respective services. I can’t imagine anything worse than losing fans because Shazam took you to an imposter’s tracks.

There’s only one way that so many different platforms could fall prey to this scheme: a music distribution service.

In this case, it seems that the distro service in question is FreshTunes, though there could have been other services involved as well.

We want to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, and to their credit, FreshTunes clearly states in their Terms of Service that copyright-infringing material is not acceptable on their platform – and the content is currently being taken down – so this does seem like the actions of one rogue actor, and not FreshTunes. It has also been less than 24 hours since the initial complaints were made too – that’s a pretty quick turnaround time for takedowns – though the music in question is still available in several places.

We reached out to FreshTunes for a comment, but at the time of this writing, we have had no response.

List of Stolen Darksynth/Cyberpunk Tracks:

Big shout-out to DEADLIFE and the fine detectives of the Nightride FM discord who helped track down many of the stolen tracks below!

Album: Electromedison – Taste of Blood (Album Art: Steven Holliday’s Creepshow anniversary poster.)

• The Laughter Of Fear (Actually Street Cleaner – Vultures)
• M.Z.18 (Actually Perturbator – Neo Tokyo)
• The Smell Of Death (Actually MADES – Awakening (Knightbots Remix)
• Drownedman  Actually (Chaos Vector – Hellhound)
• Taste Of Blood (Actually Jack Maniak – Code 403)
• Rise Of The Machines (Unknown)
• Paranoia (Unknown)
• Alloy (Unknown)
• Dark Task (Unknown)
• Mf Lost (Actually Anachronist – Somnolence)
• Last Sunday (Unknown)

Album: Electromedison – Cyberpunk

• Hunting For A Virus  (Actually Pomidor – Space Lullaby)
• Blackweb (Actually Hexenkraft – A Flame In The Void)
• Brain Error (Actually Dreddd – Omega Beam)
• Overcharge (Unknown)
• Cyberpunk (Actually Graveslayer – Hyper Alloy)
• Timekiller (Actually Tokyo Rose – Armageddon)
• Chasing A Flash Card (Actually Midnight Danger – System Outage)
• Digital Reality (Unknown)
• Infecting All Of Humanity (Unknown)
• Cyberwitchcraft (Actually Irving Force – Overlord (Original Mix)
• Hackers Symphony (Actually Daniel Deluxe – Kindred)

Album: Electromedison – Killer’s Day

• Killers Day(Unknown)
• Murder At A Bus Stop (Actually Daniel Deluxe – Brute Force)
• Wheezing (Actually Alex – Dystopia)
• Strangers Night Call (Actually Neon Nox – Streetwalker)
• Scramble (Actually Tokyo Rose – Armageddon)
• Escape(Unknown)
• A Terrible Dream(Unknown)
• Wrong Turn(Unknown)
• Someone Else’s Script(Unknown)
• Theres A Knife In The Mirror(Unknown)
• Blood With Oxygen(Unknown)
• On The Chain(Unknown)
• Facing My Demons(Unknown)
• Moon Is Hiding(Unknown)

Album: (As Cybershot) – Mechanism Of Action

• No Weapons (Unknown)
• War Z (Actually Nightcrawler – Blood Rage)
• Explosion (Actually Daniel Deluxe – Instruments Of Retribution)
• Fear In The Eyes (Actually Tonebox – Implosion)
• Graveyard Of Cars (Actually Perturbator – Creature)
• Rough (Unknown)
• Mechanism Of Action (Actually Compilerbau – Dark Forces)
• Rise Of The Tomb (Actually Kick Puncher – Red Herring – Night Ritual)
• Werewolf (Actually Lazerpunk – Power / Raydar – The Gathering)
• Cold Night (Actually VHS Glitch – Jaw Breaker)
• Cipher (Actually Darkshine – When Darkness Is Shining)

Album Electromedison – Hacker

• Cyberpunk 2077(Actually Coderpunk – Battle Of Robots (Radio Edit)
• Hacking The System (Actually F.O.O.L – Sahara)
• Hacker  (Unknown)
• Reboot 3 2 1 (Unknown)
• Cyberhunt (Actually Perturbator – Death Squad)
• Ufo (Unknown)
• We Were Declassified (Actually Coderpunk – We Were Declassified (Vinyl Version)
• The Hacker Returns (Actually Sandman – Ignite)

The track, featured in the game trailer below is SPEEDRACER [FEAT. QUIXOTIC], off of Lazerpunk’s totally rad 2018 album “Death and Glory.” It’s a righteous smash of electro and darksynth, and you should really give it a listen if you haven’t already. Quixotic also notable recently released Flamingo Drive-In, a fantastic album in it’s own right!

Congrats to both of these incredible artists!

Quixotic has been producing synth for years starting around 2011, if not earlier. In all of that time he’s been refining his sound – and that wait has paid off.

“Flamingo Drive-In”  features a variety of synth genres, from italo to dreamwave and darksynth with righteous shredding throughout. Every track on this epic debut is perfectly produced as well, polished like a pure beam of neon jutting straight into our souls.

Recently Lazerpunk has even taken to the inter tubes to preach on this fanatically grand debut, singing high praises for Quixotic in general as well.

“…Quixotic is seriously one of the best guys I know, and probably THE best music producer….he is finally releasing his LP, which I was begging for him to do since forever. I remember doing phonecalls with him at 3am, talking about music for hours, and trying to convince him to just do it, let go of his perfectionism, just release it finally, but it was useless. And I’m not surprised or disappointed, as I knew from the start that he will only release this album once it is perfect.”

Check out this gem on bandcamp here.

Q: I have heard your musical style described as “80s synthwave with a touch of industrial.” Tell me about your style in your own words, and about what music influences you as an artist.When I was a kid I wanted to be a rock star, like almost everyone in that era. We didn’t really have internet at that time, so I mostly listened to what was going on the TV and the radio, and I dismissed electronic music as dumb and uninteresting. Apart from Kraftwerk and Jean Michel Jarre. If I remember right I’ve been listening to them since nursery school. Then later in my teenage years I got internet connection and the world of electronic music just sucked me in. Especially the ebm/industrial scene. I think the first band I found was Funker Vogt, then came the rest like Skinny Puppy, Front 242, Frontline Assembly, Hocico, Combichrist, Wumpscut, etc.. I spent the fair share of my youth at various industrial parties.

Q: What equipment and/or software do you use? also, what is the creative process like for you when you sit down to work on music?People always get disappointed when I answer this question. At this point I use only software. I started with Dance eJay, a program I bought with a box of cereal. But I got bored of it quickly, and started making video games instead. I got back into making music only a few years ago. Now I use FL Studio. To be honest, I often try to copy the style of artists I like, or I try to completely copy a track of theirs. I start working on it, but at some point I’ll just decide that it would sound better if I do this and that in a different way. So in the end all my tracks are unique.

Q: You live in Hungary. What is the retrowave scene like there? Are you afforded a lot of opportunities to display and expose your work?A sad topic. Although Hungary (I mean the capitol, Budapest) has a lot of clubs and it is considered to be one of the best places in Europe if you want to party all the time, it seems to me that we are not so open musically. For example, the industrial/ebm scene is amazing in Germany. Here? It barely exists. And the same goes for many other genres. I’d kill for a good synthwave event in my city, but I figured that if I don’t make it happen, nobody will. I think the problem is that everyone is waiting for others to act. Club owners are waiting for musicians to approach them, musicians are waiting for club owners. I think we have to get rid of this “you can’t make it happen here” mindset and get off of our asses. Good things come to those who wait? Bullshit! Good things come to those who go out and take action. So my plan for 2015 is to break out from this  virtual reality, and make some retro noise in the offline world. Thankfully there are a few other synthwave artists in Hungary who I can count on, like Q U I X O T I C, Neon Droid and the 80s strange robots.

Q: Outside of strictly music, what aspects of 80s retro culture influence you or stick out in your mind?Honestly I’m too young to have any memories from the 80s, but you have to understand, that Hungary (and Eastern Europe in general) is a different place. Here time goes slower. What was the 90s in the US was the 80s here. Sometimes I think about the 90s and realize that most of my memories of that era is from 2000-2005. It would be hard to pick just a few examples. The vast amount of cheesy action movies, weird sci-fis, laughable horrors I watched on overused VHS tapes. The video games I played on old analog TVs. And the optimistic, good vibes of the 90s in general all influenced my music in some way.

Q: Outside of synthwave/retrowave music, what kinds of music do you enjoy? What other genres?I listen to a lot of genres. Mostly electronic, but sometimes I feel like I need to reset my brain and ears. Then for like a week I listen to black metal, indie, rock music, rockabilly, hardcore, whatever. Then I get back to electronic music, and to be honest I still feel like a discoverer. People who don’t listen to electronic music often dismiss it as dumb techno, and they think all electronic music is David Guetta. Then I show them some witch house, vaporwave, dark ambient, power noise, chiptune, space synth, drone music and I just see the spark in their eyes. And little after that they tend to ask me to turn off that shit, haha. Okay it mostly happens with power noise only.

Q: In August, you released “Game Over,” which is a very good album. What has been cooking since then, and what can we expect in the future? Anything in the works? If nothing else, at least give us a hint or a teaser.Since Game Over I made a few tracks, and I also started working on an other project. Which is nowhere yet, but it is going to be some good stuff. Something more harsh, more dark, and more agressive. As for Lazerpunk! I have a lot of plans for the near future. One of them is original music videos. And I don’t mean that I’ll put together scenes from retro movies (although I absolutely love these videos, bless you neros77) but I will direct my own videos. I think this is something that would make the synthwave scene a lot better. I mean I would really, really love to see original music videos from people like Protector 101, Perturbator, Lazerhawk, Gost, etc. I think music is not just about music. The music itself is just a part of it. The style, the looks, the pictures, the videos, the concerts, these are all very important things and I think the retrowave scene is missing out on these in a lot of cases. There are amazing artists out there who have nothing but a soundcloud link with a few mp3s. And no offense, because they are still doing good, since their music is great. But imagine if they had music videos, did live shows, tours, etc. I’d love that.


Lazerpunk’s Bandcamp Page