- Joined
- Jul 2, 2021
Retrowave/Synthwave
- Thread starter Absinthe
- Start date
- Joined
- Jul 24, 2021
Despite knowing a lot of people that are into it, I can't stand most synthwave.
Something about it is so formulaic and boring to me. When it was first starting out as a Myspace genre it owed a fair bit of debt to french house and that aspect of it was interesting because obviously Valerie collective and Lifelike were sort of the forerunners of merging the old and new, but somewhere along the line it fell into a really bad cliched hole of "TESTAROSSAS! PALM TREES! NEON LAZER GRIDS!" and people started kind of copycatting each other while somehow simultaneously ignoring the other 90% of what made the 80's distinct in its own right and utilizing genres that are so synonymous with it (thinking primarily italo-disco, hi-nrg, eurodance etc.) It's like a really myopic distortion of what zoomers think the 80's is, and it all seems so templatized now. The only one I can think of that has been keeping it varied is Mitch Murder. Guy's got songwriting chops and every track doesn't sound the same with the straight-8th/16th basslines and the same stock 80's drum machines (cough Linndrum cough) - yes I know he's done that stuff but he's also switched it up.
Something about it is so formulaic and boring to me. When it was first starting out as a Myspace genre it owed a fair bit of debt to french house and that aspect of it was interesting because obviously Valerie collective and Lifelike were sort of the forerunners of merging the old and new, but somewhere along the line it fell into a really bad cliched hole of "TESTAROSSAS! PALM TREES! NEON LAZER GRIDS!" and people started kind of copycatting each other while somehow simultaneously ignoring the other 90% of what made the 80's distinct in its own right and utilizing genres that are so synonymous with it (thinking primarily italo-disco, hi-nrg, eurodance etc.) It's like a really myopic distortion of what zoomers think the 80's is, and it all seems so templatized now. The only one I can think of that has been keeping it varied is Mitch Murder. Guy's got songwriting chops and every track doesn't sound the same with the straight-8th/16th basslines and the same stock 80's drum machines (cough Linndrum cough) - yes I know he's done that stuff but he's also switched it up.