Synthwave

Synthwave runs typically at 80-120 BPM and rebuilds the production sound of 1980s film scores, arcade games, and Italo disco using modern software and analog hardware. Drums lean on the gated-reverb snare and Linn-style kick associated with mid-1980s pop production, layered with electronic toms and shaker patterns. Synthesizers cover the rest: Juno-style polysynth pads, supersaw or PWM leads, FM bass patches, and arpeggiated sequencer lines. Tracks often have vocals but many are instrumental, structured like film cues rather than verse-chorus pop songs.

Synthwave came together in the late 2000s through a small cluster of producers, mostly French and American, working in deliberate homage to the 1980s film composers John Carpenter, Tangerine Dream, Vangelis, and Giorgio Moroder, plus the 'Outrun' arcade game (1986) and the broader synth-pop and Italo-disco canon. Kavinsky's 'Nightcall' (2010), used in the opening of the film 'Drive' (2011), pushed the sound into mainstream visibility. The scene has been remarkably stable since: labels like Rosso Corsa Records, FiXT Neon, and Lakeshore Records have built up a deep catalogue, and producers including The Midnight, Perturbator, Carpenter Brut, and Gunship now headline their own festival appearances.

The drum sound is the giveaway: a gated-reverb snare with a sharp, short tail and an electronic kick that has none of the modern dance-music sub weight. The lead synths are often arpeggiated rather than played as long lines, and the harmonic palette leans on major-key and Lydian-mode progressions associated with 1980s film. Bass is usually a sequenced single-note pattern, not a melodic line.

For the breakout track, Kavinsky, 'Nightcall' (2010). For an album, The Midnight, 'Endless Summer' (2016). For the harder, horror-influenced branch, Perturbator, 'The Uncanny Valley' (2016).

Most of synthwave's audience was born after the decade it references — the genre is built on imagined memory rather than lived nostalgia. Sega's 1986 arcade game 'Outrun' is so central as a visual touchstone that 'outrun' has become an interchangeable name for one branch of the genre's aesthetic.