Cyberpunk Music Dossier – March 2018

“Alright Sergeant, what are we looking at here?” The crime scene investigators were just getting started, the smell of cordite, blood, and fried electrical equipment still hanging like a curtain over the scene. The lieutenant wrinkled his nose, wafting soykaf underneath it like a censer.

“Six stiffs, probably four more that got away, but the worst part of this ain’t the bodies LT. It’s these.” Gesturing to one of the CSI technicians the sergeant donned a latex-gloved and fished around inside a proffered holdall. “Genuine blanks. We made a quick check to see if they were counterfeits. They’re not. You could load these puppies up with any kind of music you wanted and it’d pass as legit. Synthwave, cyberpunk, plunderphonics, vaporwave, hell even hardcore outrun.”

“I’d better tell the Captain. Sounds like we might have another battle of the bands on our hands.”

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Lazerpunk – Death & Glory

 

Don’t pay too much attention to the tags on this one. Whatever they say, Death & Glory is a spirited attempt to breathe life into the February release schedule. What you’ve got on your hands here is eleven tracks of outrun from a man with unfettered access to a large sample library. Not that I’m trying to sell Death & Glory short; if anything the album is a fairly interesting and at times exciting listen. Call it a testament to collaboration and co-operation, what with Quixotic and Daniel Deluxe lending their expertise, while Lazerpunk himself delves deep into the Budapest club sound.

The overall sound does dip more into the modern;RAMPAG is a straight-up dancefloor with wubs and drops all over the place while SPEEDRACER’s sound is more tied to its 80s inspiration. I’ve gone through the album twice now and on reflection, it does hew a little more to the modern but as I regularly disclaim what I like may not be to your tastes.

Psychic h0tline – Call Me

 

Long-time Neon Dystopia readers will recall my comments on the last Psychic H0tline release coming to an awkward sort of conclusion that described the sound as unfocused. With, Call Me this is certainly not the case. Amidst the electronica there’s a core of longing; the kind felt at the end of an unsatisfactory night out, of a warm body shaking and sweating in an empty kitchenette with nothing but the traffic outside for company.

Of course, my opinions are utterly subjective. But that being said Call Me is more contiguous-sounding album than its predecessor, if less off-the-wall than Phone Sex was, but that’s the price you pay for iteration. There’s something to be heard in this, and that gives it merit enough to be mentioned. It’s still Outsider art, it’s still made with a synthesis of man and machine, it’s still independent, and I’ll leave you to judge if it’s Cyberpunk or not.

Street Cleaner – Revenger

 

In the market for something hard, fast, and dirty? The kind of music that sounds like a soot-encrusted tailpipe that’s too hot to touch? Revenger is just what you’re looking for. According to Street Cleaner Revenger is the vigilante in the Camaro behind you at the intersection, cruising the streets looking for wrongs to right. The pace of the songs made a prolonged listen for a little more taxing than I’d ordinarily admit to but it’s just as possible that the caffeine depleted state of my brain made this one more difficult than it ought to have been. Nevertheless, the tempo is high, as is the distortion, and 18 minutes after pressing play you’re through to the end.

Rabbit Junk – Rabbit Junk Will Die: Meditations on Mortality

 

Can you make an emergency services siren into an instrument? Rabbit Junk can. Previously seen on Neon Dystopia some… eight months ago now on the Viva Dystopia compilation, Rabbit Junk is back with their first full-length release in years. The production is as crisp as a fresh banknote. The texture of the sound? It’s glitchpunk; there’s a heavy synth element to it, driven by artificial beats, but the song construction is happily some distance away from popular formula.

I was mainlining this in the office over the past month, cycling through the album from start to finish without taking breaks. Something about Rabbit Junk was just right to keep distractions at bay and my mind focused on the task at hand but for a deliberate sit-down-and-contemplate-kind-of-listen, I don’t think I’d throw this one on. But to apply a little lubricant to the neurons? Meditations on Mortality does the trick. Art of Defiance has the right blend of audio swagger and intensity to open the album up to you; if you like that, you’ll like this.

Stilz – For You

 

It’s been a little while since Neon Dystopia last covered the prolific Stilz and his rapidly-iterating-and-evolving brand of Canadian synthetic music. From earlier, harder releases such as Judicator to more exploratory work like Starcrash, we’re now at the precipice of the next evolution. For You. If I were to be cynical I’d describe the album as sounding almost exactly like one of those YouTube synthwave/chillwave compilations with a looping anime gif image and 90 minutes of music to play in the background while you work on something else.

That’s not meant to criticise – I know my own limitations when it comes to musical theory – because For You is a well put together album that really does sound great, it just suffers from sounding indistinct to my ear. Is it cyberpunk? It is if you jam to it on wireless earbuds while wearing mirror shades with a popped collar on your fake leather jacket while you hustle black market electronics. Otherwise, it’s an enjoyable listen in a line of enjoyable listens.

Mecha Maiko – Mad But Soft

 

Something about freezing in the winter of the Northern hemisphere puts me in the mood for the sounds out at the blurry edge where vaporwave and dreamwave live. Mecha Maiko comes through with her debut, Mad But Soft, an off-shoot of the Italo-inspired Dead Astronauts. The album art does nothing to hide the inspiration of the vaporwave audio pallette, and the chosen name tells its own tale too, of a robot made for the purpose of playing an instrument; Maiko being the word for a neophyte performer of traditional songs and dances – fitting for a first album, but I’d nod approvingly if the second album saw a renaming to Mecha Geiko.

Of the songs that have stood out to me the most I’d say the two collaborations – Tomodachi with Femmepop and Cold with Dana Jean Phoenix, and oddly enough for the same disparate reasons. Both collaborations are an injection of sound – the vocal styling and refrains in Cold are familiar to other work by Dana Jean Phoenix, but the instrumentation interludes are straight Mecha Maiko. The same again with Tomodachi, the Femmepop influence more subtle in this case. So for those of us in the North, throw on Mad But Soft and daydream about summer, and for those of you in the South, there’s no need for you to daydream.

S U P E R F L A T _ Midnight Ads

 

Now correct me if I’m wrong but I’m pretty sure that the track Discopolipsis is backed by a resampled version of Laser by Laser from 1981, and while you might be impressed that I recognised a pretty obscure piece of Italo disco, you might also be impressed by S U P E R F L A T’s relentless appetite for remixable samples from a generation ago. That’s the thing with plunderphonics; the artistry is in the reassembly. Saxophone lines, drum beats ripped from 70s disco, and voiceovers from forgotten movies are collaged into song or cut with the sounds of a dial-up modem.

Now I expect that this won’t be to everyone’s taste; if you’re willing to put time into reading through the Neon Dystopia Cyberpunk Music Dossier the chances are that you’re going to see a range of things that don’t always intersect with your interests, but there’s always the chance that you will find something. If you’ve got an interest in vaporwave but find it to be too often too self-referential then Midnight Ads by S U P E R F L A T should be a pretty fun listen for you.

Carpenter Brut – Leather Teeth

 

OK. There was a new Carpenter Brut album out recently and the terms of my contract dictate that I must talk about popular releases because that’s what brings in the clicks (I’ve no idea where he’s getting this from. – Veritas). What did I think of it? I’ll get to that in few sentences. The artwork, the title, the soundtrack all speak of a slasher movie that was never committed to film where Rob Halford from Judas Priest was responsible for wardrobe duties. Officially I think Leather Teeth is the first album from Carpenter Brut – Trilogy being a collection of EPs and CARPENTERBRUTLIVE being a live album. As such it’s hard to say that it suffers from the traditional weakness of being a second album since it’s really a first album. You get where I’m coming from, I hope. That being the case Leather Teeth wasn’t a pleasant listen for me the first time through, or the second, but by about the fifth listen I’d banished the positive memories of Trilogy and was able to listen to Leather Teeth without instinctively wanting to dislike it.

Leather Teeth as a whole is easy to dislike because it’s not Trilogy. The first listen doesn’t invite complimentary comparison, and as a whole, I don’t know if it’s trying to exploit its sources, or me into paying for it. Leather Teeth is hard to recommend, too, because it’s not Trilogy and having to cycle through an album until you’re ready for it is hardly the seal I’d want to put on a review.

Despite all that I’d be remiss in dismissing Leather Teeth. It’s superbly produced, it’s dripping with style, it’s thematically contiguous without repeating themes, and is a triumph of collaboration if you consider just how many hands went into making this album. If you’re a Carpenter Brut fan you’ve probably already reached your own conclusions by now, and if you’re not then I’d suggest that you listen to Leather Teeth in the dark. Preferably alone, with an errant branch rapping at your bedroom window.

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And that’s your dossier! There’s always more in the pipeline because human creativity is the closest we have to a perpetual motion engine, and because I can’t stay away from the synthwave tag on Bandcamp. Drop us a line if there’s something you’d like to see covered or something important we’ve missed in our human fallibility; until I get a direct connection from my brain to the internet I’m reliant on you to keep me pointed in the right direction.