Synthwave

How it sounds

You're doing a hundred and twenty on a motorway that doesn't end. The horizon bleeds magenta behind palm trees that are no longer palm trees but silhouettes cut out of another planet, and the sun is a circle split into horizontal lines, as though someone drew it with a ruler.

The arpeggio starts and it isn't going to stop. It's an analogue synth running in circles, cyan over violet, and instead of accompanying anything it builds the whole set brick by brick, until you stop hearing music and start living inside a film that was never shot.

The dashboard is lit. There's a cassette in the slot. The speedometer reads something not entirely possible.

And here's the strange thing about synthwave: it wasn't born from pain, it was born from speed. It's nostalgia for a future the year 2000 cancelled without notice, the feeling that we were once going to live like this and it was taken away before we arrived. That's why it aches a little even when nothing in the lyric is sad.

In the build everything compresses. In section B everything opens and the road becomes a grid vanishing toward infinity, and for a moment it doesn't matter where you're going because the going is the place.

The asphalt is wet and throws the lights back. It hasn't rained. It never rains here. It's wet because it looks better that way.

Palette: orange sunset cyan violet magenta