SYNTHWAVE

Everything old is new again. Just this once, it’s appropriate to begin with a cliché. After all, synthwave as a genre is all about clichés snatched from PG-13 movie posters circa 1985.

As a consciously-considered (contrived?) genre, synthwave has only been around since the mid-2000s, but the music that inspired it has been around for 40 years. Created and consumed by a generation weened on equal parts Blade Runner, Battle Zone and Back to the Future, synthwave owes everything to the aesthetic of the 80s.

So what is it? You’ve got it etched into your memory – the pulsing synth basses of a John Carpenter movie or Michael Boddicker’s gloriously goofy end titles for Buckaroo Banzai – not to mention the low-rent electronic scores to dozens of straight-to-VHS sci-fi flicks.

And the games! Who isn’t inspired by the cacophony of electronic bleeps that accompanied the flickering glow of the local arcade – or better still, the action of a battered, well-played game cartridge?

Game composers like Chris Huelsbeck composed mini-epics for many