Tag: 80’s culture

[Listen] LEON ELSE: The City Don’t Care

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Disillusionment, isolation, cog-in-the-wheel existential crises, the overwhelming feeling of disenfranchisement and  desensitization… are only some of the dark, jaded emotions that were expressed often in the art and music scenes of the 80’s.

City populations grew so dramatically, that the lost individual, disconnected from reality, became a symbol of new life in 80’s American cities. ‘I am an island, lost in an ocean’ Leon Else sings, on a backdrop of a darkened synth landscape, a low pulsating rhythm that sets off the brightness of his echoing vocals. Else brings sharp production to his 80’s revival track, generating a bittersweet feeling for an era I’ve never lived through but can absolutely relate.

The loner, racing down an empty highway going somewhere but nowhere in particular (also visualized on the single’s album cover) is a renewed visual corollary, reminding me of Sam’s character in TRON: Legacy, before he found his virtual escape, or Knight Rider, and of course Ryan Gosling’s character in Drive.

Perhaps this is why 80’s music and culture seems to resonate so much with millennials  who are experiencing the same feeling of disconnection with reality, under the influence of social media, polarizing politics and mundane jobs.

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[Listen] SUPERCAAN: The Bull

(free download) 

This band has only one song on their Bandcamp. Just one. Yet they’re charting on Hype for the past two days because no other band’s sound has come so close to sounding like a 21st century version of The Cure. That sultry, dark, deep voice over dying snyths and guitar, with that sense of spaciness between the two… where the texture of the voice identifies much more than each beat of synth from a MS20 riff.

(This thing is a MS20)Korg MS-20.jpg

[Listen] MAGDALENA BAY: Money Lover

magdalena bay

Listen:

Magdalena Bay has been releasing track after track drawing inspiration from various shades of electro-pop, each single a little window into the past. This song is deceptively innocent, riding on the sweet sounds of saxophone doused in sparkly waves of synth just as Mica Tenenbaum soulfully sings about how she doesn’t care about your daddy’s yacht.

Get used to frequent posts about Magdalena Bay, a 50 km long bay along the western coast of the Mexican state of Baja California Sur, known for sun, sand and Californian Grey Whale migration. You get the picture.

Ami

[Read] SYNTHWAVE: Spring 2019

(I won’t apologize for pixelation. It adds to the effect)

Unfortunately, as a college student I tend to organize my dabbling in music by semester, and this semester is a love story with the growing (re-growing?) genre of 80’s inspired Synthwave/Vaporwave/Retrowave. Heavy, punctuated beats, rising synths, cowbells, snazzy guitar riffs and neon has flooded my daily listening, closely followed by my aesthetic inclinations.

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To introduce the series of posts to come in the next few months, nothing can summarize the tone better than my current room decoration. Described by a close friend as ‘looks like you’re doing drugs but without drugs’, the wall is filled with retro-inspired imagery; vintage anachronistic collage, the ever-fascinating spaceship-esque wedge of the Lamborghini Countach, the iconic rising neon sun and a fitting neon-filled dry cleaning shop (and palm leaves? the colors looked good).

I must have spent hours scouring the web (sources will follow) to find images that really resonate with my current music obsession, along with the feeling of freedom and spirit that defined the decade of plenty; a time without inhibition, a time of innovation and a time that had complete and utter faith that would be a magical, technologically-spirited future. Though the music and the art of the 80s described this future emphatically, it doesn’t seem to have ever been truly realized, a distinction between past and present that is becoming all the more distinct as we approach 2020. This music, this aesthetic, fills a void of hopelessness and disillusionment so aptly, I can’t believe it has taken so long to escape the depths of the internet and become mainstream.

The posts will explore the following (a growing list)

  • Finding music using car videos
  • Nostalgia: how does music make me I nostalgic for a time I’ve never lived in?
  • The best artists in the business dipping their toes (or diving head first) into the genre: look forward to lengthy and exhaustive playlists to satisfy your craving the luxury of 80’s nostalgic freedom.
    • Miami Nights ’84
    • FM-84
    • The Midnight
    • Parcels
    • Patawawa
    • Flight Facilities
    • St. Lucia
    • Saint Motel
    • Touch Sensitive
    • Roosevelt
    • (The infamous) Breakbot
    • Roisto
    • Magdalena Bay
    • Christine and the Queens
    • M83
    • FEHM
    • Tom Misch
  • Glimmers of 80s pop in today’s mainstream music
  • YouTube treasure trove: 80s re-works of modern pop songs
  • Footloose: the new versus the old
  • Drive (Ryan Gosling)
  • Stranger Things (Haven’t watched this, but I’ve heard the music)
  • Discovering oldnew music: YouTube vs Spotify vs Soundcloud

Somebody’s Child seems to have grown quite a following; the indie-pop (ish, you’ll find out I’m not very good with genres) artist has infused his primarily alternative track with the most electric synth progression I’ve heard in a while, building into an electronic haze of pain and angst towards the end. A good introduction to the kind of tracks I may be posting more than any, though perhaps not as pure.

That’s about it.

Ami