The Other Synthwave

Synthwave builds worlds. Often they're worlds of memory, of collective nostalgia that's recognizable and shared: not contrived or fake, but inevitably limited in their capacity to say anything else. From its earliest years, even in its most free and exploratory phase, when the genre didn't yet have a name, its sounds and imagery had already coalesced around a strong, iconic aesthetic: pulsing arpeggiators, squared-off basslines, nocturnal melodies, the outrun iconography of neon lights, wet asphalt, cars racing toward a digital horizon.

Over time, this set of suggestions crystallized into a highly codified language – a ready-made package that certainly strengthened the genre's recognizability, but which also narrowed its expressive range. It's above all by looking at the most visible names – the ones that populate memes and social media trends, crowd thematic playlists on streaming platforms, and fuel the proliferation of micro-tags within dedicated communities – that this rigidity becomes evident.

From grammar to living matter

And yet, alongside this dominant strand, there has always been another way of understanding synthwave: not as a stylistic destination, but as a tool, a starting point. A body of sounds and references solid enough to sustain grafts, cross-pollinations and further emotional elaborations. It's in this borderland — still shifting and barely visible from a critical standpoint — that we find a constellation of artists for whom synthwave grammar is a central component of their expressive language, without ever fully containing it. A reality that calls for an effort of mapping, necessarily partial and preliminary, in order to emerge and gain recognition.

For these artists, synthwave is neither a parenthesis nor a passing gimmick, but a structural element of paths that are hybrid by nature. The context is broad, even centrifugal, and its movement alongside its own boundaries makes any clear-cut classification difficult, which helps explain why many of these names remain marginal even within the most well-informed communities.

Complicating things further is another blurring factor: artists who, while much loved by fans of the genre, base their style on a repetitive, spatial, synthetic sound with roots in Tangerine Dream, yet share very little with the rhythmic and melodic imagery that is part of the genre's identity. This selection has chosen to exclude them, focusing instead on music that isn't simply a "cousin" of synthwave, but sits – consciously or not – in direct continuity with it.

By the same token, also excluded are hybridizations that remain entirely within the core of the formula: AOR, synth-pop, house music descended from French Touch, or that dark progressive rock in the vein of Goblin that already forms the backbone of one of the genre's largest sub-strands, the so-called darksynth. Attention here is instead directed toward bolder crossings, where synthwave enters into dialogue with seemingly distant languages, broadening its expressive range without losing what makes it distinctive.

In the middle of a transformation

Many of the titles featured here fall, broadly speaking, within the realm of progressive music. This is no coincidence: a leaning toward science fiction, worldbuilding and storytelling entrusted to shifting developments and changes in atmosphere has been part of prog-rock's DNA well before synthwave codified an imagery of its own. The languages involved, however, are rarely those of classic progressive, which remains in the background. While for a work like "Caligvla 2082" – OndaRock's album of the month upon release – the recovery of prog codes is explicit and deliberate, far more trajectories reach expanded forms by lateral routes: through the most cinematic post-rock, the Dubstep diaspora, extreme metal. But the spectrum of hybridizations is far wider still, also taking in works tied to alternative hip-hop, chart-topping R&B, and even traditional folk.

The twelve selected albums offer a meaningful cross-section of a rapidly expanding landscape; a horizon that could be described – with all due caution – as post-synthwave. A label used until now mostly to indicate crossovers with post-metal, but which today seems fitting to describe a much broader field. Rounding out the picture, the accompanying playlist widens the view even further, also including artists who are "too much" or "not quite enough" synthwave to make the final cut, or projects that, while lacking a fully realized or representative album, offer significant clues as to the directions this creative space is heading.

And so, in the 40-track compilation – and in the discography alongside it – trajectories emerge that span different years, genres and latitudes. And that show a clear clustering in the current decade, a sign that this is precisely the phase in which possibilities are multiplying rather than settling into place. The titles proposed here mark only a few points of entry: the rest is an invitation to explore, to range further afield, and to tune in to the surprises that will most likely await anyone willing to follow its developments in the near future.

Polinski – Labyrinths (2011)

[post-rock, progressive rock, IDM]

At a time when synthwave wasn't even a word yet, the keyboardist of electro-post-rockers 65daysofstatic, Paul Wolinski, recorded "Labyrinths", venturing into a no-man's-land where videogame worlds take shape out of near-prog patterns. What results is a free, melodic vision that transmutes rock's epic sweep into a lattice of beats, glitches and digital climaxes. A perfectly imperfect sound, somewhat naïve yet capable of striking deep chords: like an old 8-bit game stumbled upon by chance, limited in its means but full of wonder. "Tangents", in 5/4, snaps forward and halts like a thinking machine; "Kressyda" grows through layering and metric reversals that keep expanding the horizon; "Stitches" lands with filtered vocals and a linear 4/4, its most direct and luminous moment. More than a journey into the future, the hypnotic surges of "Labyrinths" map out a memory that belongs to no one: lines of code and echoes of pixelated worlds, caught between curiosity and distance.

Kuedo – Severant (2011)

[footwork, future garage]

Kuedo is Jamie Teasdale, aka Jamie Vex'd, one half of British duo Vex'd, who delivered in "Degenerate" one of the darkest, most incisive Dubstep albums of the wave. On his debut solo work he sheds that oppressive tone to open up to new, shifting, imaginative sonic forms: even the cover art, with its tangle of geometric lines and pastel hues, hints at an unstable balance between futurist drive and retro grace. On "Ant City" the bass digs deep while electronic fragments scatter like shards of glass dust; "Salt Lake Cuts" slows into a suspended midtempo, where pads sketch icy landscapes crossed by acid basslines; "Flight Path" turns the sequencer into a motionless flight, poised between density and dissolve. Teasdale absorbs footwork's syncopated grammar – rolls, toms, handclaps and rhythmic freedom – and reshapes it into a lyrical form, letting "Severant" live on opposites: cold and warmth, machine and breath, memory and projection.

Infinity Shred – Sanctuary (2013)

[post-rock, IDM]

The evocative potential of a full fusion between post-rock and synthwave is perfectly summed up in the debut work of New York's Infinity Shred. Born in 2012 out of the progressive chiptune duo Starscream, Damon Hardjowirogo and George Stroud replicate their rock instrumentation + programming formula, this time enriched by guitarist Nathan Ritholz (already in cahoots with bit-rockers Anamanaguchi). On "Sanctuary" they're also backed by Jonathan Baken (aka b4ken), with whom they hone an immersive, personal sound that effectively harmonizes quiet/loud dynamics with a dreamy, slightly shoegaze melodicism, not far from M83. The balance struck recalls Italy's own Port-Royal: poignant, luminous emotions, architectures that look toward Intelligent Dance Music and its visionary drive, and a subtle way of balancing past and future, capturing both memory and wonder without getting trapped in mere quotation.

Danger – 太鼓 [Taiko] (2017)

[future garage, French touch, electro]

The title means "drum," and not by chance: Parisian Franck Rivoire builds his debut on an architectural use of percussion, monumental and almost orchestral, with beats that expand across multiple bars, articulating an almost cinematic tension. There's something of the majesty of fellow countryman Woodkid in his way of conceiving rhythm as scenography, but filtered through a more introverted sensibility, made of rarefied halftime passages that recall future garage and the spectral intimacy of Burial. The vocals dissolve, arpeggios glimmer like headlights reflected in the rain, and every variation opens onto a space larger than the last. Only in backlight does a French touch echo emerge, made of electro pulses and four-on-the-floor passages – but the gaze is never toward the club, and the tension stays suspended without ever exploding: no drops, only developments that envelop you. Music for a nighttime window, amid neon and wet asphalt: visionary, tense, and irrepressibly human.

Ronski & Satanic – Täältä Tullaan, Kuolema! (2018)

[abstract hip-hop]

A pairing that would seem obvious, almost inevitable: the impetuous flow of hip-hop should combine perfectly with the regular pulse of a synthwave kick drum. And yet, so far, there seem to have been few genuine meetings of equals, where the rap element isn't reduced to a mere feature and the arpeggiators don't remain simple retrofuturist varnish. Ronski & Satanic, a Finnish supergroup from Turku formed by members of Ronskibiitti and Nightsatan, tackle the fusion from the abstract hip-hop side, letting the voice's shifting meters graft onto the mechanical rigor of the beats. The project's only album, "Kuolema saapuu!" ("Death is coming!"), plays on shifting configurations that run from the '80s-style porn-groove of "Mustat Pilvet," to the digital hardcore blows of "Nuijasota," the throbbing basses of "Darwinismi," and the Teutonic geometries of "Rio Grande" – dense spirals of synthetic frost, sleek and merciless.

Astrophysics – Apathy (2020)

[breakcore, atmospheric drum'n'bass, darkwave]

Anomalous from the outset, Astrophysics moves at the fringes of synthwave like an inside saboteur. Brazilian producer André Luiz da Silva dos Santos weaves together breakcore and atmospheric drum'n'bass with darkwave sounds reminiscent of early Interpol, creating the setting for nervous, introspective hybrids. On "Apathy," bursts of breakbeat and dry, Joy Division-style rhythms meet retrofuturist arpeggiators and synths, in an overlay of detachment and emotional tension. The quiet/loud builds evoke the cinematic post-rock of bands like Explosions in the Sky, though shot through with light/shadow contrasts closer to the catharsis of Amesoeurs. The cover art, with its anime-emo cosmonaut and CCCP lettering, spells out the project's hybrid soul – caught between utopia and disillusionment, between post-internet patchwork and sovietwave. The melancholy of a future that never was hovers among the debris of real socialism and its cosmic fantasies, suspended between nostalgia and vertigo. An exercise in style, yes, but a vibrant and personal one.

Abstract Void – Wishdream (2021)

[blackgaze, post-rock]

A splice of black metal roughness and shoegaze effects-laden swirls, the blackgaze of artists like Alcest and Deafheaven has exploited a shared passion for instrumental layering to conjure hazy, oppressive scenarios that are nonetheless often steeped in hope. A leap toward synthetic, futuristic atmospheres might seem forced, if not far-fetched, but the music released under the name Abstract Void seems to exist precisely to prove otherwise. As often happens to those who operate on the margins, the project of Russia's Bogdan Makarov never quite established itself either among fans of its source genres or in a broader context, but with third album "Wishdream" it found its expressive peak. The quiet/loud ascents combine with harsh vocals submerged beneath cascades of distortion and electronic arpeggios, and double-pedal rhythmic barrages that propel opalescent synth themes. An oceanic, alien sonic space in which otherness becomes a vehicle for introspection rather than distance.

The Algorithm – Data Renaissance (2022)

[progressive metal, djent, post-Dubstep]

The union with heavy metal is a solution widely explored by acts with both feet planted in synthwave, like Dance Of The Dead and GosT. The path of French artist Rémi Gallego, aka The Algorithm, is instead a step sideways – or rather, a plunge into deeply synthetic waters, launched from an unexpected springboard: the most hammering, mathematical progressive metal. His journey begins in the early 2010s from a mind-bending fusion of the djent slashes of Meshuggah and the brostep of Skrillex, but over time he sheds the machine-gun rhythms to develop a more enveloping, evocative sound. "Data Renaissance" captures the project at its perfect balance point: highly mobile midtempos where hazy, biting synths weave a dialogue between low and mid frequencies. The abstraction of technical metal grafts onto the nocturnal stride of the sharpest Dubstep. A cyber universe in full expansion, where body and code end up coinciding.

Artax – Sands Of The Oasis (2022)

[art pop, Aor, progressive metal]

If a band with the sound of this Glasgow quartet didn't exist, it would have to be invented. Active since 2018's "Times Like These" EP, the project named after the horse from Atreyu in "The NeverEnding Story" describes itself as "prog-metal synthwave with cinematic Eighties elements", and fully lives up to that mission statement. Yet without falling into a mere overlap of clichés: far more than any single act from either of those scenes, the resulting style actually recalls eclectic artists like Mew, Astronoid, Vola. It puts atmosphere and feeling at the center, combining iridescent synths and compressed guitars with the thunderous voice of singer Katie Willis, creating an unusual mood somewhere between massive and dreamlike. Songwriting and personality are further refined on the following "Eternally Regretful", where the influences are transcended to the point that the "synthwave" label becomes perhaps more misleading than descriptive.

The Weeknd – Dawn FM (2022)

[alternative r&b]

One of the most successful artists in the world, Abel Makkonen Tesfaye is the king of alternative r&b and the most committed champion of the synthwave sound in the mainstream. No album of his marries narrative concept and musical form quite like "Dawn FM", conceived as a radio broadcast from a kind of musical and emotional purgatory: a transitional space where the radio doesn't comment but guides, marking the time needed for the passage. Among the many collaborators (from Max Martin to Quincy Jones, via Oneohtrix Point Never and Tyler, The Creator), what stands out most are the tracks where Tesfaye's vocal flexibility meets Daft Punk-like echoes and hypertrophic synths: the introspective midtempo "Is There Someone Else?", the reworked synth-funk of "Sacrifice", and the prog-soul swells of "Take My Breath", the peak of ambition on an album that shuns retro revivalism and uses those colors to express entirely personal doubts and hopes.

Teeth Of The Sea – Hive (2023)

[post-rock, nu jazz]

There really are many – since the early Nineties, in fact – projects seeking common ground between post-rock, space rock and synthetic oscillations in the Berlin School style of Tangerine Dream and company. Several of these are today often filed under synthwave too (e.g. Zombi, Maserati, Voyag3r, Sinoia Caves), but on closer inspection their sound has very little in common with the pulses and atmospheres typical of the genre. Among the exceptions is the excellent latest work by British act Teeth Of The Sea, who since the mid-2000s have been charting a highly personal path through post-rock, nu jazz, ambient, psychedelia. "Hive" sketches faded urban landscapes crossed by dim flashes of light, where synthesizers merge with timbres and dynamics that breathe jazz-rock. Electronic textures overlap with feverish pulses, gradually fusing rhythmic rigor with emotional tension. An album that doesn't chase effect, but a slow, magnetic form of immersion.

Neon Odin – Allfather (2023)

[dark folk]

The intersection with Nordic folk isn't the most obvious one, but in the Neon Odin project, Romanian musician Vvildir – based in Hungary and already active between post-rock and atmospheric black metal – finds surprisingly fertile ground. "Allfather" weaves synthetic visions into folk's ritual dimension, uncovering the closeness between two languages both marked by enveloping atmospheres, slow developments, dark tonalities and a strong melodic sense. The talharpa, the ancient Scandinavian bowed lyre with a rough, ancestral timbre, dominates "Wield The Hammer", merging with straight beats in a taut, evocative interplay. On "9 Days And 9 Nights", orchestral basses emerge alongside an almost new age sensibility, animated by female voices and fluttering electronic lines. In a climate that often borders on "Final Fantasy"-style epic symphonism, "Nordavind" instead opens a brighter window: acoustic arpeggios and eurodance pulses that don't break the spell, but make it surprisingly accessible.

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21/03/2026