What is Synthwave?

First things first: I'm Max and I make music. More importantly, I listen to music. Music is the backbone of Synthwave culture and will be the primary focus of this blog. That said, movies, TV shows, and games will show up from time to time as well, since all of these industries play off of and inspire each other, further defining what Synthwave is. Today I'll be providing a simple overview of the Synthwave/Outrun culture as a pretense for posts to come.

One of the early synthwave artists, Kavinsky, with his signature red Testarossa.

Technically speaking, Synthwave is a music genre known for its soaring analog synths and powerful drums with gated reverb, heavily inspired by music styles of the 1980s, but infused with more modern techniques and song structure. The culture itself is generally referred to as Outrun (with varying degrees of capitalization) and can be identified by neon signs, varsity jackets, neon lights, dark colors, and grid-like patterns, among other things. This is not to be confused with Vaporwave, which is themed around early 90s computing, ancient statues, and pastel color palettes. More on that in the future. Outrun gets its name from an album from one of Synthwave's earliest artists, Kavinsky, who named it after an arcade game from the mid-80s. You can see Kavinsky's influence in much of today's Synthwave whether direct or indirect.

Ryan Gosling in the movie "Drive" (2011).

Another large influence was the movie Drive (2011) directed by Nicolas Refn and starring Ryan Gosling. The movie, set in modern day Los Angeles, embodied the style that would come to be known as Outrun. The dark and moody lighting, the location, the wardrobe, the protagonist, it all fit so well. That's not to mention the soundtrack, which was almost entirely made up of Synthwave and Synth-pop music, even featuring Kavinsky himself in the title sequence. This movie introduced so many people to the culture, including Dan Haigh of Gunship, one of today's more popular Synthwave music groups.

An album cover designed by James White of Signalnoise.

One last thing to touch on before ending this overview, is the art. There's endless Synthwave/Outrun themed art for a variety of reasons. It's distinctive, colorful, and can be relatively easy to make if you don't feel like straying from the norm. One of the most popular artists, and my personal favorite, is James White of Signalnoise, a graphic design company whose works you may already have come across if you're even slightly familiar with this community. In the past few years, this art style has slowly leached into the mainstream with the aid of popular entertainment like the Netflix series Stranger Things. Whether the soul of the art has been preserved, or if it's been a positive thing for Synthwave/Outrun as a whole is somewhat debatable, and the subject for another post here on the Max Compulsion blog.

That's all I'll cover for today. For the sake of brevity I've had to massively simplify things and leave out countless details, all of which I hope to cover soon. For now, I can provide links to more comprehensive articles if you'd like to know more. This Iron Skullet post covers Synthwave music and its sub-genres, and this wonderful video by PINKAS showcases the differences between Outrun and Vaporwave.

As for this blog, it isn't intended to be educational. This post was necessary to get people up to speed with the basics of what will be covered, but upcoming posts will primarily consist of my opinions and reviews on certain music, movies, and aspects of Synthwave culture that I feel strongly about.

Until then, I'm Max, and I want to thank you for reading.