Following 2014’s brilliant ‘Metropolis’, Nightcrawler returns with perhaps his darkest work to date, ‘Strange Shadows’. The EP featuring 5 original and 4 remixes take great inspiration from Italian Giallo and horror movies of the late 70s and 80s.
Plug & Play, the swan song of Pittsburgh, PA’s Betamaxx, is the latest album to blow me away with its sometimes dreamy, often emotional, and consistently cool sounds.
Dan Terminus, pseudonymous darkwaver extraordinaire from Lyon, France, has released a real earful with Finland’s Blood Music, The Wrath of Code. And let me tell you, it’s a dizzying doozy of a musical ride.
I first became familiar with Musician/Composer Rich Vreeland AKA Disasterpeace after hearing his mystical and beautiful score for Nicolas Ménard’s 2013 short film, ‘Somewhere’. With a bunch of awesome game soundtracks already under his belt, including Fez and Bomberman Live: Battlefest, Vreeland’s latest musical adventure has seen him team up with Director, David Robert Mitchell (The Myth of the American sleepover) for a new horror movie entitled, ‘It Follows’. I was lucky enough recently to catch up with him for a chat.
As many NRW readers may have noticed, while I love all retrowave music, my tastes do tend toward the darker end of the genre’s spectrum… and toward its fringes. That’s why I wanted so badly to review this set of tracks, and I’m very pleased to be doing so.
Upon receiving this from our editor and firing it up to listen, I was immediately reminded of a stark and grim horror soundtrack… then surprised to hear the layers begin to take shape. And that was just the beginning for Done With You, a delightfully shadowy little EP from Confrontational.
I first came across JK47’s soundcloud via tumblr a few months ago and much like DREAM Catalogue has become something of a new found treat for me.Cyberpunk was released back in August 2014 and is a thirteen track expression of the future from the past, that is equal parts Natural City (2003) and Masamune Shirow’s Tank Police.
After a few months of listening to his soundcloud and bandcamp pages, I finally found the time to get in touch with JK/47 for a short interview. He talks about the story behind his album Cyberpunk, the difficulties of making an album in Afghanistan and the dark side of the future.
None other than
“Kalax”
with his album
“Metropolis”.
A friend clued me in to this EP over social media. Killer Instinct is apparently one person, “J.H.,” and they describe Killer Instinct as “retro dark synth inspired by cult horror movies.” That description held allure for me, but upon listening to the EP, I was fully hooked. It definitely holds true to the above quote.
Angel Of The City is an independent film made as a nod to 80s vigilante/action movies. I have not watched the entire thing, but as part of this assignment I did watch a couple of trailers. The film looks promising, and I’m excited to see it in its entirety.
Can there be such a thing as arena synthwave? Carpenter Brut’s EP III answers with a resounding (and incredibly loud) yes!