Favorite tracks : EgoLand, Artct (fr Paul Valenti Jr.)

Maethelvin ‘Lost Tapes from Hardware Memories’ is out now on Bandcamp.

Though their appearances have been fewer and further in-between as years have gone by, fervour and interest in the duo remained unwavering. From talks about an ‘Alive 2017’ live tour, a new album in 2021 to the most recent rumours about a possible appearance during The Weeknd’s Superbowl Halftime Show, not a year has gone by without some form of speculation about the French duo’s return.

To begin to describe Daft Punk’s impact would amount to enumerating several generations’ worth of musical evolution, from the French Touch movement to modern hip-hop. Needless to say, the debt owed by the Retrowave scene is immeasurable, outweighed only by the legacy the group will have left behind. With aching hearts and decades worth of cherished memories in our minds, NewRetroWave reached out to some colleagues and friends in the Retro scene to pay tribute and share their testimonials about what Daft Punk’s music means to them.

As for me, Daft Punk was one of my earliest and fondest childhood memories.  In an age where vanity trumps substance, they are a reminder of all the miracles that music can achieve when fueled by passion and integrity. Having been shunned by French music executives too stubborn to dream, the duo has gone on to reach stratospheric heights that their naysayers still dream of even coming close to. More than mere commercial success, the story of Daft Punk is a musical tale unlike anything the world has ever seen, an intergalactic transmission of love and unity for the whole world to hear.

Favorite track : Something About Us.

To me, Daft punk were a huge influence on my music taste. Way back in the 90s before synthwave and even electroclash was popular they were doing retro (80s) inspired house music. They were a precursor for my musical tastes to come in the next 2 decades. With the Tron : Legacy soundtrack they really showed how versatile they can be making one of the best OSTs of all time.

Favorite track : Da funk

Marko Maric
(Synthetix Sundays host)

To me, Daft Punk is the mother of all epic French Electronic music. I have admired Daft Punk for years and beyond, especially as a teenager when I was lost and didn’t know which musical direction I should be heading. Then Daft Punk came along and made my heart dance. Releasing timeless songs that will stand the test of time. What an inspiration! All songs are safely stored in my random access memory.

Favorite Track : Around The World

NINA

To me Daft Punk is an Electronic Force that shook the world.

They really opened my ears to electronic music when I was younger. Sure, there were other electronic acts who were making music, but the Daft Punk sound really resonated deeply with me. Around the World was on constant repeat in my house that it would drive my parents mad! lol. They are a huge inspiration to many and ultimately have had a HUGE influence in music.

 

Favorite Track : Around the World

DJ Ten
(Artist, Founder of NewRetrowave & NRW Records)

I love the composer/director combo! I’m not a musician but I like to think that you kind of turn into one whenever you direct a film by guiding and influencing the work of the artist set with the task of composing the score.

With Daft Punk, I feel like these two worlds were intimately linked. You can obviously see it in their Interstella 5555 film that draws directly from their own repertoire, but this relationship also transpired through the robot personas that they portrayed in their music videos and in real life.

I think that the news of their separation had such a strong emotional impact on some of us because it felt like the end of a great film we’ve been sitting through for nearly 30 years…

In that regard, the ‘Epilogue’ video was a perfect way to end the feature film.

Favorite Track: Aerodynamic

Seth Ickerman

To me, Daft Punk is the real good reason to be proud of France. We once brought Kavinsky to headline an electronic music festival in Normandy. He mostly played his friend’s music, throughout his set with the occasional Rage Against the Machine track every now and then. That night, we were treated a 100% pure Kavinsky-type set. He also played some Justice and all1800 people went crazy! Being the organizer, I was busy sorting a bunch of different issues when I suddenly heard the crowd go even crazier and saw the pit go wild. Kavinsky had just followed up Justice with a Daft Punk track. It must have been ‘High Life’ or ‘Crescendolls’, I don’t quite remember. It was a song off of Discovery. We were in a small province of about 100 000 inhabitants, 15 years after the album’s release… The mere fact that one of Daft Punk’s friends came and played one of their songs made everyone lose their minds! That’s the power of Daft Punk, the legend. One year later, after diving deeper into Kav’s album, his history with Oizo [Mr.Oizo, aka Quentin Dupieux], Guy Man … I started Retro Synth Fury with Johann of Drive Radio [aka Absolute Valentine]. Since then, all of the artists we received at our RSF shows unanimously mention Daft Punk as one of their biggest influences.

To me, Daft Punk is my entire childhood. From when I was five, I was competing in gymnastics and I would hear Da Funk play every time during the intermissions. They would also play ‘Around the World’ and even some tracks by Jean-Michel Jarre!

Favorite Track : DIGITAL LOVE – Daft Punk represents my first love. When Discovery came out, there came a downpour of hits on every French radio station : there was obviously ‘One More Time’,  a more discrete ‘Aerodynamic’, then came ‘Digital Love’… Every day around 5pm, I’d sit at my windowsill and wait for the girl I had a crush on to pass by my street, and ‘Digital Love’ would play every single time she’d pass by.
I didn’t understand a word of English at the time, I didn’t even remember the name Daft Punk. But with time, I realized that the lyrics to the song were the exact reflection of what I was feeling at the time. It’s amazing to realize how universal their music is. Even without understanding their lyrics, their music manages to convey a message. Lyrics aren’t typically  all that important in electronic music, but even on that aspect they managed to hit a bullseye.

Anthony Retro Synth Fury

To me, Daft Punk is the best live show I’ll ever see. Seeing them in the Nîmes Arena was an unforgettable experience. I discovered their music through Homework and they made me realize that it was possible to make music at home, and that’s how my home studio was born. I also really loved the Tron Legacy Soundtrack, a great score from top to bottom that still influences me to this day.

Favorite track: Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

Absolute Valentine
(Artist, founder of Lazerdiscs records, co-founder of Drive Radio)

To me, Daft Punk is audio engineering that changed electronic music forever. Their use of filters and compression is unmatched and more influential than any other electronic sound in the last 30 years.

Favorite song: Crescendolls

Starcadian

To me Daft Punk is the genesis. As one of my earliest experiences with electronic music, their sounds were immediately captivating and set me on the path leading to where I am today. The friends I would meet, the interests I would develop… who I would eventually become. The Robots are partly responsible for all of it. Adieu my friends.

Favorite Track: High Life

Andrew Zistler (NewRetroWave Music Editor)

To me, Daft Punk is 1995, when I was 12 years old. I didn’t really listen to music at the time, but I’d occasionally skim through the radio channels on my parent’s old stereo system. One day, I came across ‘Da Funk’ on what must probably have been NRJ Radio. I remember being struck by the sounds, by the overdriven TB and the super heavy rhythm and bass section. Back then, we didn’t have Shazam or the Internet to identify songs, and it took me ages before I found out what I had just heard. It was one of my biggest frustrations at the time!

Favorite Track: I think that my favorite track is ‘Something About Us’ for its terrific bassline. I’m fortunate enough to own speakers through which they sound particularly good, and it’s always a pleasure to re-listen to that song. Furthermore, the song appears on one of my most cherished albums, an that album continues to inspire me to this day.

Maethelvin

To me Daft Punk, was some sort of melancholic tea cake of Marcel Proust. There was a bunch of stuff that annoyed me with Daft Punk, but the whole electronic and especially all the retro-driven electronic scene owe them a lot. They democratized electronic music to an audience larger than anything we saw before and largely popularized the concept of faceless musicians, which, as you can imagine, vastly participated in my vision for Carbon Killer. Their most melancholic tracks that I initially didn’t really like, are for years now, evocating the slowly fading memories of a warmer time in my life, and I do enjoy a lot to give them a listen as a way to time travelling to those moments… Godspeed, robots !

Favorite Track : If you want to travel too, listen to « Something about us »

Carbon Killer

To me, Daft Punk is my youth. The first track I heard was ‘Da Funk’, and then ‘Around the World’. I didn’t know what a vocoder was. Homework felt like a revolution. Discovery was an evolution.
Favorite Track : Veridis Quo

Makeup and Vanity Set

Daft Punk to me is music I’ve been carrying in my record bag since the release of Homework and Discovery. As a dj I love playing Daft Punk in my set. Whether it’s ‘One more time’, ‘Aerodynamic’, ‘Revolution 909’ or ‘Robot Rock’ to name a few.. for me each Daft Punk track is a gem. Play one of these or any of their tracks in a club with a good soundsystem at the right moment, at the right time.. you reach total euphoria. Daft Punk’s music gets the crowd going! People love it. Honestly I think it just feels right to me for them to close the book. They’ve done it all there’s nothing more to add, proof or show.. this is it and it’s epic!

As a club night organizer. “Daft Punk vibes” is what I tell people not familiar with electronic music, when describing our Night Arcade club nights in Amsterdam. Who doesn’t know Daft Punk!

Favorite track: Short Circuit

Devereaux 85
(DJ & founder of Night Arcade Nights at Melkweg Amsterdam)

To me, Daft Punk represents an era, a generation! I’ve always been drawn to their distinctive sound, it’s unique and instantly recognizable. I love all of their albums but the one that left the biggest impression on me was Discovery. Their collaboration with Leiji Matsumoto is simply magical and so organic. It was a big influence on me for my Supernova albums. I discovered Daft Punk in the Nineties when I was starting out as a DJ. I had heard a few of their tracks off of Homework that really left an impression on me, but ‘Rolling & Scratching’ is the track that got me definitely hooked! People would go wild whenever I’d play it live. The groundwork was set and that’s when I knew that I needed to follow in their tracks. I was lucky enough to see them onstage in Nîmes in 2007. It was simply fantastic… an unforgettable audiovisual experience. I also got to meet Pedro Winter in Cannes, who had a great role in their career and who is a terrific guy.

Beyond their musical input, the band were unanimously loved for doing what they felt like doing! They turned down huge deals and collaboration offers that any artist would go crazy over and they set their own rules. They didn’t follow anyone, they’re the ones that people followed. They left with beauty and class and the whole world is paying tribute to them. As for me, I thank them for their career. The world will have known a great (French) group whose music we’ll keep playing over and over and bobbing our heads to.

Favorite track: That’s really tough. I’m torn between Digital Love (the Supertramp gets me every time) and Too Long (And Romanthony’s magical voice on Discovery).

Morgan Willis

To me Daft Punk is the reason I got into electronic music and also into producing…heck even my mask is heavily inspired by them 🙂. They are and always will be my gold standard when it comes to electronic music, be it production, song writing or style.

Favorite Track…jeez, thats hard, but it has to be Robot Rock 🙂

Powernerd

To me Daft Punk is all about evolution. Constantly evolving their sound and changing the industry with every release. They were pioneers and true game changers, reviving long dead genres back into the mainstream for new listeners with fresh ears. It was the soundtrack to my youth. Beautiful memories featuring a Daft Punk backing track. It’s a sad feeling knowing I’ll never see them live. It’s been one hell of a ride. Thank you for the music.

Favourite Song: Technologic / Aerodynamic

James Secker
(Film Producer & Director, Organiser at Retro Future Fest)

To me, Daft punk is a duo that established themselves as an internationally recognized household name from the very start of their career. Through their combination of quality and simplicity, they paved the way for a number of French producers alongside Air, namely Justice and Kavinsky. Without Daft Punk and Pedro Winter’s management, these acts would have probably never made it outside France. When pretty much 95% of successful acts in France sound more or less like carbon copies of what’s going on in the U.S, it’s a real pleasure to see French artists making an international breakthrough and setting a precendent with their own style.

My first great memories of the band happen to be their first ventures on screen, namely with their all-round great music videos for Da Funk and Around the World. Through their slick, unconventional and very artsy visual aesthetic, people quickly picked up on their need to do things differently, to add a certain depth that was often lacking with most popular electronic music acts. They steered clear of pop music clichés where everything is about money and sex, whether implicitly or explicitly.

My favourite release of theirs is paradoxically one of their least popular ones, the Tron Legacy Soundtrack. I didn’t really like the film but the Soundtrack is sublime. I’ve listened to it hundreds of times and I will never grow tired of it. It’s definitely one of their most Cyberpunk and epic releases. Before I started Fixions, I’d spend a lot of time listening to that album as well as the first Fever Ray album, so those two albums are huge influences for Fixions.

Favorite track: Outlands

Fixions

To me, Daft Punk embodies the mystery, the coolness, the world-class musicianship, the groove in electronic music. Those instant hits you can’t help but dance to. Incredibly catchy tracks that effortlessly stay in your head for days and days.

Favourite track: Instant Crush (feat. Julian Casablancas)

LAU
(Artist & founder of Aztec Records)

What’ve you got to share and recommend to your fans and readers?

I went for an album that takes me back to a time I cherished as a kid in the eighties. It’s an album that influenced me a lot. It reminds me of my youth but It’s not something I grew up listening to. I am an Eighties kid but I didn’t fully experience the decade the same way some of my older peers in Valerie did. I was seven years old at the end of the decade, so I didn’t experience all that much from the Eighties, besides kids’ stuff like Chantal Goya (singer), Récré A2 (a Children’s TV program in the 70s and 80s) and Dorothée (French Children’s TV show presenter whose shows helped popularize Japanese Animation in France).

The album I picked is Neurovision by Telex. I discovered this album around the same time the Valerie Collective started, when David (aka College) was just launching his blog. At the time, the Internet wasn’t as developed as it is now. The first version of Valérie was like a moodboard where we’d post stuff we liked; stuff related to Italo Disco, film stills, photos and illustrations from the Eighties… I discovered Telex during one of my internet scavenger hunts through their song ‘Peanuts’.

They’re kind of a Belgian “Joke” band, a trio made up of Marc Moulin, Dan Lacksman and Michel Moers. Marc Moulin is very famous in Beligum, he’s a radio guy who later became a Jazzman who signed to Blue Note records. He’s also the guy who produced Lio’s first hit songs like ‘Banana Split’. They released this sophomore record in 1980, which is seen as some sort of “joke” project in which they were just messing around, although I don’t quite agree with this point of view. The album is definitely a joke with a heavy concentrate of Belgian absurdist humor. There’s a very creative aspect to it, where they’ll allow themselves to go down the wackiest routes whilst keeping the execution top-notch. Marc Moulin handles the arrangements and is an amazing pianist. Dan Lacksman handles the studio machinery and is a bloody amazing sound engineer. Michel Moers is a poet who doesn’t sing all that well but whose lyrics skillfully dance at the edge separating the absurd and the ridiculous. The album art is also fantastic and was done by an artist called Ever Meulen, who has an Eighties Clear Line style (see: Ligne Claire).

The album has this extremely tacky track called ‘Euro-vision’ that the group presented at the 1980 Eurovision contest. They entered the contest hoping to score no points but missed their goal because Portugal actually liked the song and awarded them ten points. Their performance was pure nonsense and they were really struggling to keep it together. It’s hard to be truly, completely ridiculous. They even took a photo at the end of their set with the flabbergasted audience. With that being said, the lyrics to the song weren’t all that dumb.

The album also has two tracks that I really love. There’s ‘My Time’, which is an Ann Steel cover song. It’s very Synthpop, the arrangements are great and Moers puts on a great performance. Then there’s ‘Plus de Distance’, which is a completely absurd, neo-romantic Synthpop track about airports. It’s one of my go-to songs. It’s tacky but cool. It’s so well done, that the tacky side doesn’t come off as ridiculous.

This is part of the reason why I wanted to bring up Telex. These guys were off the rails but put were doing it extremely well. They would leave the beaten tracks with their musical background and weren’t tied down by musical labels.

Their albums Wonderful World and Looney Tunes were somewhat foundational to the New Beat sound, this short-lasting Belgian music style that marked the clubs of the era. It’s a style somewhere between Hip-hop and early techno, hardcore and Gabber. Telex was somewhat swept up by the movement. By simply fooling around, they ended up innovating and laying the foundation for a number of music genres.

Legend has it that New Beat came from a mistake, that it came from a DJ accidentally spinning a 12” LP at 33Rpm. The movement only lasted a few years. Near the end, everyone was sampling one another. New Beat is basically the same sound sampled a thousand times over. It made no sense, but it didn’t matter.

How does this whacky sense of humor translate, forty years later?

That’s the thing. It’s hard to figure out which parts were tongue-in-cheek. It’s the same deal with Lio. ‘Banana Split’ works because it’s super catchy. For a song meant for radio airplay, it’s really well composed and put together. However, lyrics are pretty salacious, especially when you consider that it’s a 16-year-old singing them. It’s very borderline. It’s a joke, but it’s very well produced. That’s what Telex is.

It may be a joke, but it’s super well done and it’s got a lot of Synth sounds that you still hear nowadays in Synthwave and Synthpop. Even in modern productions like Cléa Vincent, you can hear Telex-like gimmicks such as Jazzy, Moog-esque touches and liquid, resonant sound textures.

There’s a tacky side to Synthwave that artists more or less own up to. We’re borrowing from the Eighties, one of the richest but also one of the worst musical eras, creativity-wise. One of our neighbours played some Jeanne Mas at a quarantine balcony party recently, for example. Her music is tacky, but her songs have some amazing synth sounds that everyone still uses in Synthwave: Fairlight, Jupiter…

Going back to the Valerie collective, do you remember what you were initially after when you started the blog?

I can’t speak for David, and he’s the one who launched the blog. For me, it was the Italian producers like Moroder that fascinated me. John Carpenter’s films came up a lot, too. I remember Valérie being heavily soundtrack-oriented. The goal was to dig up obscure, outdated and occasionally tacky stuff. I remember someone bringing up the credit sequence to Buckaroo Banzai, for example. It’s quite simply the worst movie scene of all time. It’s ridiculous, it’s extremely tacky, but the music is awesome!

Speaking of which, can you tell me a bit about the Hollywood films and series you grew up on?

This is going to sound basic, but the first film that really left an impression on me was Back to the Future II. My friend has loads of VHS tapes, but he only had the second movie in his collection. I watched that film so many times. There was also Quantum Leap, this series by Donald P. Bellisario about this time traveller who needs to take people’s place in order to influence history and return to his era. The guy used all of these silly tricks to replace people and he had this hologram guiding him around that only he could see. Like everyone else, I was also into Star Wars, too. My dad used to watch Miami Vice a lot, which ended up leaving quite an impression on me, especially the flamingos, the parrots and the sailboard in the opening sequence. I came back to it pretty late and started watching it again around the time we started Valérie, which is when I realized how groundbreaking the writing and the music were for its time.

Could it be where the ‘neon’ aspect of Valerie came from?

Actually, we were never really into that aesthetic. Alex Burkart from The Zonders, who is our graphic designer, was probably more into that kind of thing. I think he might have gotten that reference through the world video games. We were more inspired by photos. Stuff like Venice Beach, Florida, architecture…

Lastly, have you got any news or projects to share with your fans and readers?

Lately, I’ve been using my time to finalize some unreleased club-oriented tracks that I’ve been playing at my last few shows. I also got some new hardware and exploring some more Ambient sounds. We recently did this show at La Gaîté Lyrique (Paris) with David (College) for the French premiere of Rise of the Synths. I had prepared a few soundtrack/ambient oriented pieces for the occasion with my new setup, and I’d like these tracks to have a life of their own. The reason why I felt like talking about Telex is also that I’m thinking about going down a more ‘simple’ route. I want to move away from the hassle of production and getting clean sounds and focus on the purely creative side of things. That’s where I’m at right now.

Thumbnail photo by @onedaystranger

Be sure to catch Maethelvin on social media:

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Saying “Aaron Vehling is brains behind Vehlinggo,” is a vast understatement. As the editor, publisher, senior writer, and podcaster behind the stellar Vehlinggo machine, I imagine him as a sort of multi-armed many-faced deity constantly spinning about like an enlightened dervish, synth music, news, and reviews spewing from his fingertips with righteous retro glee.

The scene owes Vehling a great deal of thanks – and instead he has thanked us with “Vehlinggo Presents – 5 Years,” featuring many fantastic artists like The Midnight, Parallels, Anoraak, Betamaxx, Bunny X, Deadly Avenger, Diamond Field & Dana Jean Phoenix, FM Attack, Forgotten Illusions, Highway Superstar (feat. Zoe Polanski), In Mirrors, Johan Agebjorn (feat. Tom Hooker & remixed by Wolfram), Le Matos, Maethelvin, Mecha Maiko, Metavari, and VHxRR.

The album is fantastic – go listen to it here now!

Maethelvin

As promised, Valerie’s Maethelvin delivered an entirely reworked sound, pushing past his all-too-mimicked compositions and delivering an Italo-laced dance mix that took the room by storm. Grimlin’s following set provided a pretty sharp turn towards darksynth’s heaviest sounds, whereas Reno kept the sonic aggression going with slick, dark techno tracks with thumping industrial beats and a good dose of bestial energy. We’ll be keeping an eye on these young talents, and so should you.

Grimlin

Reno

Night number two got off to a great start, as Parisian fans flocked to the Petit Bain, queueing at the doors to catch NINA’s French live debut, who proved to be a tough act to follow. The mood was set and the energy soared to the sounds of smooth, catchy Synthwave pop ballads, each one catchier than the next. Opening shows are notoriously challenging, but Nina and her partner Laura got the ball running at high speed from the get-go. Fortunately, it appeared that every subsequent act on the bill was well prepared, each one awaiting their cue to keep the pace up in this crazy marathon.

NINA

Laura (NINA)

Morgan Willis followed things up with a brand new set unveiling his brand new record The Jenkins House, mixing his fresh dancefloor bangers with some old classics from Supernova and even a cut from Miami Calling.

Morgan Willis

The masked, vocoder-powered space-jockey Starcadian took over the dancefloor, starting with the whimsical, awe-inspiring ‘Interspace’, leading into an increasingly heavy hitting set full unexpected of twists and turns. It takes a bold, wicked mind to mix Ronnie James Dio’s ‘Holy Diver’ vocal tracks, but it takes a genius to turn the heavy metal classic into a James Brown funk banger. It’s only blasphemy until you realize it actually works.

Starcadian

Sung took over the night with some solid retrowave tracks that got the venue floors trembling from the ecstatic fans, followed by an equally hard-hitting set of syncopated low-end bassline attacks by Christine.

Sung

Yx

Finally, Yx from Paris laid down the last fix of nocturnal vibes of the night with his first ever live show. Nervous but focused, the young artist had a lot to live up to but proved his case to a slightly tired but no less supportive audience.
Last but not least, it would be a crime to omit the tireless efforts of Anthony, whose DJ sets kept the energy going between each and every set throughout both days.

Anthony

With just over 13 hours of live shows and DJ Sets, this Retro Synth Fury Festival left little room for disappointment and a whole lot of expectations in the minds of every attendee who embarked on this journey alongside us.
We certainly can’t wait to see what the next edition will have in store for us.

Special Thanks to Anthony, the staff at Supersonic, Le Petit Bain and all of the artists.
All photos by Robin Ono. 

 For those who might not yet know the story, can you tell us a few words about the origins of Maethelvin?
Maethelvin basically started in 2010, around the time David Grellier was starting the Valerie blog. The whole idea of Valerie was to dig up and share Eighties tracks for our mixing sets. Valerie really developed around “silly” mixing nights we were hosting in Nantes, which is where we all come from. It eventually turned into a blog and eventually David started developing his project as College as well as the Valerie collective as we now know it. College basically grew out of the Valerie blog. I was working on my Dance/Techno project Dach Tünner and David was playing in Sexy Sushi when he asked me to work with him. We started working together and our friends Gaël and Arnaud started The Outrunners as friendly competition. They kept at it and it turned out pretty well for them since they were a lot more focused than we were. David and I tried to work together but nothing really came of it, namely because our ways of writing were too different, so he continued College – which, at the time was called Dusty Haze – on his own.

In parallel, he would also post Eighties songs and visuals. At the time, there wasn’t nearly as much of it as you may find online today. David slowly started adding College tracks as well. I decided to pull a prank on him one day by showing him some track I had made and pretending it was by some obscure artist from the Eighties. I chose the name Maethelvin because there were no search results for that term on Google. The prank worked really well and it drove David crazy for two whole weeks before I finally admitted I had written the song. Thus Maethelvin was born, which accounts for “unbankable”, incomprehensible name. It basically comes from a bad spelling of “Maethelwine”, which is old English for “Melvin”.

So you originally tried to work together on College?
We tried to start it together, yeah. He also worked with Gaël, who played with him on College’s first live show at Le Lieu Unique in Nantes. Le Lieu Unique is somewhat of a cornerstone venue. We have a mutual friend called Frédéric Sourice – who goes by the name Phonème – who books shows there and who knows the local scene very well. He’s the one who started booking us there.

 It’s fairly interesting to note that the Valerie artists are often tagged as founding members of the whole Synthwave genre, despite the fact that you don’t exactly see yourself as a part of the scene.
The thing is that we were just playing Eighties music. I’m not too big on the term “Synthwave”. To me, it just feels like a vague term that people felt the need to come up with, to group together all these artists that were starting to make Eighties music. We were just making music with Eighties gear, thus making it “Eighties music”, nothing more. We were also born in the Eighties. I was born in 1983, so I got to live through that time. I don’t think we made anything new, really.  We just make music that borrows from Video Games and Nineties dance culture. What I do is nothing new. Our purpose is pretty much the same as that of pop music, which is to have fun, to party and to play gimmicky, accessible songs.

At which point did you become aware of Synthwave scene?
Pretty recently, probably no earlier than 2014, which is around the time we started getting more gigs and around the time we started meeting artists from the scene. We met Andreas (aka Robert Parker) for example when we played Helsinki. He came to see us and we had no idea who he was, despite the fact that he already had a pretty decent following. He was super friendly and we got along really well. I remember Gaël (The Outrunners, Forgotten Illusions) telling us the next day “This guy seems pretty legit!”.
That’s the time we realized we had probably missed the mark. Until then, we had no idea that a whole scene had developed with people that were regularly namedropping our projects and the collective in interviews. We had stayed in our little bubble since 2010 with our friends Anoraak and Minitel Rose. Back when Valerie started, we knew of acts like Electric Youth, Hot Pink Delorean and the whole Australian movement that was emerging from the Synth-Pop scene. It was a whole different side of things. There were also some British acts like Fear of Tigers and Russ Chimes, who worked with Valerie for a bit. They were amongst the first in the whole “Eighties Revival” movement.

 Having lived through the Eighties’ is there anything that intrigues you about this “retro” aesthetic?
It really depends whether you’re talking about the Eighties from 2010 or its 2019 version. I make a clear distinction between our Synthwave fans and the audience we had back in 2010.  I’m nearing my forties now, and I’m under the impression that the average Synthwave fan demographic is between 25 and 30 years of age. What I find really interesting is how Eighties culture is being re-appropriated by a whole generation that didn’t live through it. I find it really awesome.

It’s true that one must remember that this current “retro” aesthetic is the result of Eighties pop culture being filtered through the lens of people who weren’t necessarily born at the time. I assume that the streets back then weren’t paved with fluorescent neon lights…
Indeed, it was probably more of a club thing. It’s also not really what we’re drawn to in the Valerie Collective. We don’t really identify with the whole ultra-glittery neon aesthetic or Tron grids. We feel pretty distant from all of that. To us, we associate the Eighties with shows like Miami Vice. There were neon’s too, but it’s less “Retrofuturistic”, less Sci-Fi. It’s more grounded, closer to what the Eighties actually felt like. There was actually a pretty realistic feel to Miami Vice. The atmosphere and the stories weren’t too far-fetched.
What I also enjoy about the Eighties is its creative freedom. To me, the Internet came with a form of standardisation of music, everything tends to feel the same whereas this was less the case in the Eighties. The record industry was releasing heaps of crap every minute and people were making all sorts of things with the arrival of all these new machines. It’s what allowed genres like Acid to develop. We really enjoy that freedom.

It’s hard to deny the fact that the Synthwave genre also came with a saturation of gimmicky copycat projects. Would be fair to say that your affiliation with this largely “standardised” scene is what once caused you to somewhat grow tired of Maethelvin?
Absolutely, though I’m not sure if “tired” is the most fitting word. All of the songs I wrote prior to last year, including my latest EP – which is made of tracks from my first live show in 2014 – are things I don’t necessarily identify with. I’m really glad to have made them, but I wouldn’t feel too keen on playing them live again, simply because they sound like a lot of music being released today. They rely on gimmicks that are a little bit overdone. I didn’t feel like doing that anymore, so I briefly turned to Techno to change things up, to try out new gear, new songs, and return to Maethelvin with a more Italo-influenced club sound, which was the essence of what we were trying to do nine years ago. It’s got more of a Techno edge, as opposed to the «poppier » side of Synthwave. A lot of Synthwave songs tend to have the same structure, I find. I’m not pointing fingers nor do I want to pull anyone down, because it’s usually pretty well produced and done by talented people, it’s just not what I’m after. Producing for the sake of producing isn’t my thing.

 Does this mean we’ll be seeing a new side of Maethelvin for your upcoming set at Retro Synth Fury Fest 2019?
Absolutely, I’m going to be switching things up for a more Italo-influenced sound: lots of drum machines, much fewer breaks and more of a « club-oriented » sound.

Has this led to a change of gear or approach to your songwriting?
Somewhat. I’m also starting to realize that I’m an Eighties kid as well as a Nineties kid, given my age and the fact that the Nineties was when I started listening to music and playing video games. I’m also growing increasingly aware of a sort of symbiosis between Dach Tünner and Maethelvin. The former is starting to sound a little more « Eighties retro », whereas Maethelvin is starting to borrow a little more from Dance music. I’ve been told that my new stuff sounds like the Soundtrack to Streets of Rage, which itself was inspired by Black Box.

If you could bring back something and banish another from the Eighties, what would you pick?
We need to bring back the moustache, I’m thinking of growing one.
Also, the Internet should have never existed. Things were better back in the day. I’m going to sound like such an old fart for saying this [laughs]. I do love the Internet, but not so much these days. A lot of great things did come back from the Eighties though: Air Max shoes, Digital watches, retro-gaming, Gameboys, analogue synths…

When I asked David the same question he said he would banish the haircuts.
[Laughs] That’s easy for him to say, he’s got no hair! [Laugh] That’s a good answer though. Those haircuts definitely shouldn’t come back.

Closing off: can you name one of your favourite albums, movies and books?
The album that left the strongest impression on me is The Man Machine by Kraftwerk. It’s one of the most modern-sounding albums I’ve heard. It’s also been sampled to death. It has this Hip-Hop edge, the band work wonders on their gear, the songs are incredible and the overall aesthetic is incredible.
Film-wise, I’m going for something pretty basic: Shining. The cinematography and the Soundtrack by Wendy Carlos left a strong impression on me. My mum had the great idea of showing it to me when I was seven years old, and I think it scarred me for life.
Book-wise, I’m going to say Ubik by Philip K. Dick. That book messed my head up. That book is insane. It’s said to be unadaptable to film, simply because the book is so out-there.

European Retroheads, be sure to catch Maethelvin and many more heavyweight Synthwave acts at Retro Synth Fury in Paris. 

Retro Synth Fury
April 4th at Supersonic, featuring Réno (Fr), Grimlin (Fr) & Maethelvin (Fr)
https://www.facebook.com/events/303022477023907/

April 5th at Le Petit Bain, featuring Yx (Fr), Christine (Fr), Starcadian (US), Morgan Willis (Fr), NINA (UK)   https://www.facebook.com/events/321622565224863/