The music slowly pours in and slowly submerging the lonely backseat with wave upon wave of sonic serenity, washing all worries away with each subsequent cut of pure ambient outrun bliss. Rows streetlights swell and blossom into a bokkeh garden and passing cars trace hazy headlight trails across rear view mirror as they drift into the night. All worries evaporate into the atmosphere as you sink deeper into the world of Division Street’s Districts.

Division Street ‘Districts’ is out now on 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Capgras’ Delusion: The delusion that family, friends and others have been replaced by imposters.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.

Dimensional is out now on Bandcamp via Innerworks Records.

Hi Dana! What’ve you got to recommend to us today?

I would love to talk about the film Labyrinth from 1986, starring David Bowie and directed by Jim Henson. I was born after the movie came out, but it’s one that was really important to me throughout my childhood. Even watching it now gives me that sense of ‘instant nostalgia’. I have some really cool older cousins who played it for me one Christmas when I was young. We were all big David Bowie fans and I remember thinking it was the coolest thing ever. The music was amazing, the visuals were incredible, the puppet-work was really inspiring…

What do you remember about the music you grew up with?

My parents always played a lot of eighties music like Madonna and David Bowie. Later on, I got into Prince’s eighties catalogue. I remember the first album that I ever owned was Björk’s Post. That album really inspired me. Alternative rock was probably my first foray into music though. Electronic came in later on.

Do you remember what got you interested in diving into electronic music?

I think it was the sound of the synthesizers. They sound so warm. To me it’s this perfect amalgamation of humanity and technology coming together: Synthesizers are technical machines that we operate, but they ultimately need that human touch, that human connection to allow them to come to life. I love that aspect of it. The songs also remind me of the eighties music that I had been listening to as a child.

I remember getting into Boards of Canada and thinking what an incredible sound they had. That was also a big draw for me to jump into the Synthwave scene. I found that a lot of these Synthwave artists were incorporating these nostalgic eighties synthesizer sounds in a way that sounded poppy and dance-y, which is closer to my background as an artist. I like to perform and sing very upbeat music, and I like the fact that Synthwave is a nice fusion of the two worlds.

What I love about Synthwave is that it covers such a broad range of different types of music. You can have some of that orchestral, cinematic approach, or you can have some of the more dance-y, techno approach. You have great artists who are able to write really slick pop hits within that Eighties retro nostalgia framework. There are similarities to modern pop in that you can have great melodies, catchy hooks, and memorable choruses, but there’s a bit of grittiness, a bit of an unpolished, nostalgic feel to Synthwave that is more appealing to me than what you hear in some of the ultra-slick modern pop songs out there on mainstream radio.

Do you remember how and when you came across the Synthwave scene?

I believe it was on Soundcloud. I was at Theatre school at the time, which was certainly demanding and a lot of it was producing other people’s written work, whether it be music, monologues or theatrical pieces. I needed this creative outlet to explore my own voice and musical creativity. I believe I stumbled upon Robots with Rayguns and Betamaxx on Soundcloud, and I immediately fell in love with the sound and vibe that they were putting out. I reached out to them and they agreed to collaborate on a track, so I started releasing different collaborations with different artists. It all grew organically and ultimately developed into people contacting me and coming up with more and more material.

Have you got any news to share with our readers, any updates?

I just came out with the album Megawave, which is the collaboration album with Powernerd. I’m really excited to release it with Outland, which is also an event company that produces live shows. I’ve been really lucky to have performed three shows with them, two of them in London (UK) and once in my hometown of Toronto, where they put on a massive show this past summer. I’ve had a great working relationship with Powernerd over the last few years, working on various tracks. We performed two live shows together before. We have really good energy and we wanted to keep the momentum going with this album. People responding so well to it, and I’m thrilled about that. The next step, once everything opens up again, is planning the next European tour. I’d like to go back out there for the third time. I have dates booked for October, so my fingers are crossed. When everything is safe, it will be so nice to see everyone and experience some great music together under one roof again.

Thumbnail photo by Hayley Stewart.

Be sure to follow Dana Jean Phoenix on social media for more music and updates:

Website

Facebook

Bandcamp

Youtube

Soundcloud

Instagram

Twitter

Furthermore, fans of the ‘slowed + reverb’ remix pocket of youtube were surprised to find out that artist included a nod to their niche community by sampling their version of the song in the official music video (at the 2:23 mark).

Whereas some in the community were quick to praise the song as a modern Synthwave classic, others retort with a sense of scepticism, dismissing it as a ‘mainstream’ artist’s attempt to draw credibility and cash in on an internet-born subculture. After all, some scene veterans will recall the time Seapunk got fished out of the internet’s depths only to be left for dead after Rihanna’s 2012 performance of ‘Diamonds’ on SNL.

So what is this self-proclaimed singer ‘with the hair Singing ’bout poppin’ pills, fucking bitches’ doing in discussions on RetroWave? With the triumphant success of Carpenter Brut’s DIY music video for ‘Turbo Killer’, the Synthwave community has shown not only the strength of its symbols but of its dedicated fanbase spanning across all continents and age groups. To music executives searching for credibility and authenticity, such communities are goldmines waiting to be found.

With that being said, it is important to note that Abel Tesfaye’s (aka The Weeknd) interest in 80s music and movies is nothing new. As a matter of fact, many of the the artists’ most ‘Retrowave’ retro influences can be heard in their rawest form on his 2013 debut full-length album.

Beneath its misleadingly corny title, Kissland is a dark record that balances sexy yet lethargic R&B influences and retrofuturistic soundscapes with a distinct cyberpunk vibe. Youtube teasers and rare interview snippets have confirmed that the album’s music and visuals were inspired by the likes of John Carpenter, David Cronenberg and Ridley Scott with Blade Runner being a major influence (hence the title of the album’s closer, ‘Tears in the Rain’). With its dissonant soundscapes and cold, industrial beats, Kissland is an eerie voyage into the unknown whose sense of ambition will have largely surpassed any mainstream pop record of its time. The Deluxe version of the album also includes his hugely popular remix collaboration of ‘Odd Look’ by Retrowave heavyweight Kavinsky and SebastiAn, the first in a string of collaborations with the Ed Banger records roster that will later include the likes of Gesaffelstein and none other than Daft Punk.

With his 2015 sophomore record, Beauty behind the Madness, The Weeknd makes his most decisive step towards more radio-friendly pop songs with its luscious west-coast vibes and a heightened sense of grandeur. Stylistically, Beauty Behind the Madness is a side-step away from the retro sounds of Kissland, save for a few synthpop influenced moments sprinkled throughout the record. The record’s fourth single ‘In the Night’, is an eighties power-ballad that channels Abel’s inner Michael Jackson to the sounds of pulsating basslines and old-school drum machines. With its distinct grindhouse aesthetic, the music video also marks the first collaboration between The Weeknd and Alex Lee and Kyle Wightman of BRTHR, who will further anchor this aesthetic into The Weeknd’s brand with their later collaborations on ‘The Party Monster’ and ‘Blinding Lights’. 

With his third record, Starboy, The Weeknd returns to a more synth-heavy production, exploring a much smoother, dreamier side to his sound, drawing from the space-themed funk sounds of the eighties with the help of Daft Punk on ‘I Feel It Coming’ and expanding on the Afrofuturist aesthetic first shown on his 2012 music video ‘The Knowing’. With its twinkling-twinkling little synths, the record explores a wide range of stylistic mashups between vintage sounds and modern beats, hitting the sweet spot where trap hip-hop and afrofuturism unexpectedly reunite. Starboy’s third single, ‘Party Monster’ sets eerie, atmospheric sounds in motion with a modern hip-hop beat, like a trap remix of a track from the Stranger Things score. ‘Secrets’ samples and interpolates Tears for Fears’ ‘Pale Shelter’, while ‘A Lonely Night’ sees Abel pulling off his most convincing Michael Jackson pastiche yet. Though not Retrowave by any stretch of the imagination, Starboy is an unsung work of brilliance and a prime example of creative reinvention through its unique blending of vintage and new sounds. Appropriately, Abel will follow up by contributing to the soundtrack to Black Panther, Marvel’s very own Afrofuturist superhero movie.

With this background history out of the way, we are now left with this latest instalment in the Weeknd discography: After Hours. Obviously, those expecting for a chart-topping Retrowave classic will come away disappointed. If anything, After Hours is set in the natural continuity of Abel’s musical journey. As with Kissland and Starboy, After Hours’s blending of retro sounds settles on the fringes of what one would typically classify as ‘Retrowave’. The Blade Runner influences of Kissland make a comeback on the album’s opener ‘Alone Again’, as do the nostalgia-drenched Analog synth melodies à-la-Stranger Things on ‘Hardest to Love’ and ‘Faith’. The first half of the album sees Abel revisiting some of the drugged-up lethargic sounds of his early releases, resulting in some more modern-sounding tracks such as ‘Too Late’,‘Escape from L.A.’ and ‘Snowchild’, whereas the second hits back with some of his most unapologetically retro cuts yet, namely ‘Blinding Lights’, ‘Save your Tears’ and ‘In your Eyes’, the record’s Michael-Jackson-meets-synthpop moment, complete with a gritty Slasher-movie music video and cathartic sax solo. ‘After Hours’ channels The Weeknd’s love for the Ed Banger sound with its dark echoing beat and distorted bassline blending the likes of old-school Gesaffelstein and Justice for an epic album finale before reaching outro, produced by none other than Vaporwave pioneer Daniel Lopatin (aka Oneohtrix Point Never).

Sadly, whereas Kissland’s Deluxe Edition unveiled the classic Odd Look remix, After Hours tacks on a couple of promising yet ultimately lacklustre efforts to branch out towards the Internet’s musical subcultures. Despite the involvement of Lopatin on a couple of album’s tracks, the Deluxe album’s ‘Vaporwave remix’ of ‘Heartless’ is but a shoddy attempt to recreate the genre’s signature aesthetic (with an unused, unnecessary Lil Uzi Vert verse stitched onto it). The Chromatics have their remix of Blinding Lights, a more honest but ultimately unremarkable bonus track that somehow only serves to make it sound bland and cheap. Oneohtrix Point Never and Paris-based duo The Blaze do provide some interesting remix tracks in their own respective styles, though nothing remarkable enough to warrant a second listen.

Overall, Abel remains in control of his craft and influences as he tackles this new chapter in his career without ever losing touch of his early alternative R&B roots. As with Kissland and Starboy, After Hours is a solid record with a lot to offer to Retrowave and Synth-pop fans with minds open towards modern pop production, complete with a mysterious cinematic universe waiting to be uncovered, layer by layer, piece by piece.

Article by Robin Ono.