Boys Do Fall In Love by Robin Gibb

This may be a little bit more Top 40 standard pop for what I usually do, but the song "Boys Do Fall in Love" by Robin Gibb (one of the BeeGees) was on a "New Wave 80s Megamix" that I recently listened to, and it was one of those songs that I had completely forgotten about ("Mary's Prayer" by Danny Wilson was another from that collection that I'd completely forgotten about too.)  I'm not 100% sure that I'd call it New Wave, even with a very generous definition of the genre.  On the other hand, what exactly is the dividing line between late stage disco, Hi-NRG, synthpop and a whole host of related genres that were birthed in the late 70s and first half of the 80s anyway?  Rather than worry too much about it, I'll just point out that this song is pretty cool, and sounds very, very 80s in a way that nothing today does, even the retro-80s synthwave stuff.

Plus; Robin Gibb!  "Robin, do you have any thoughts?"
...
"No.  No, I don't."
"Robin, please.  Just say something."
"No."
"Anything.."
"No."

Shadow by The Chromatics

The Chromatics are a Portland, OR band that, although modern, has a very definate retro-80s vibe about them that is deliberately cultivated.  Probably for this reason, they contributed a track to the Drive soundtrack, as well as a number of other Hollywood projects.  It also sounds, curiously, a lot like Sonic Youth's song "Wish Fulfillment" although rendered in a very different style.  This particular song was featured in the Twin Peaks reboot/relaunch.  It seems to fit somehow.

This is the epitome of what is sometimes called "dreamwave" I think—although I can't get a decent definition from anyone who coined that label, it clearly stands for the wispy, wistful, ethereal type of synthpop, synthwave, and other related genres.  It's often melancholy, usually downtempo, and often overtly romantic in nature. If I were to create a playlist of my own tracks called Dreamwave (which I have done, actually) the earliest song that would qualify would almost certainly be Chris & Cosey's "October (Love Song)" and the biggest contributors of material would be Book of Love and Marsheaux—although that may be an artifact of my own collection (as well as my familiarity with songs that could qualify.)

Curiously, as I've investigated The Chromatics, I haven't necessarily fallen in love with anything else that they've done.  But I absolutely adore this song.  It's one of my favorites, and certainly my clear favorite of the wistful "dreamwave" type of music that I have.



CHROMATICS "SHADOW" (Last Dance Of The Night... by chromaticsvideo

We Don't Care by Ed E.T. & D.T.R. vs MCP, ft. Natski

In one of the most complicated artist fields I've had to deal with, Ed E.T. & D.T.R. (a Welsh hardstyle duo) team up with fellow Welshmen MCP and vocalist Natski to produce one of my favorite reverse bass tracks—and a relatively modern one too—"We Don't Care."  This musical style has been kicking around with too much significant change for quite a long time.  My last post (the first hardstyle post I made) for "First Match" by TNT was a track released in 2002, when the style was still relatively new (Q-Dance was founded in '99 and Qlimax in 2000.  Defqon.1 wasn't founded until 2004.)  This one is from 2014, but Ed E.T. and D.T.R. are still doing the same thing with 2016 and newer releases like "The Black Hole."  Of course, I'm a relatively recent convert to the hardstyle sound, so that's cool—I've got a fairly deep back-catalog of stuff to explore.

Anyway, as I said last time, this stuff isn't necessarily musically very deep, but it's super intense and exciting—it's main purpose is to be so, in fact.  This means that—I dunno, maybe in a few weeks or months, I'll be a bit tired of it, as I now am with synthwave, and I'll get rid of my playlist, and just keep them as tracks that come up occasionally in my big shuffle play.  With only about 200 out of nearly 4,000 tracks that get regular circulation on my phone, one won't come up more than once in twenty songs on average.

Still, it's rather amazing that I've grabbed that many tracks already.  While I probably grabbed about that many synthwave tracks, and mostly only really love the dreamy vocal type now, I never got anywhere near that many hard trance or acid songs.  Well, maybe I did with trance, years ago, but most of those aren't on my phone anymore.  Hardstyle may yet end up having been more of a faddish infatuation than something that I love forever, and I may end up thrifting some of my tracks down when I decide that I don't love them all as much as I thought I did when I grabbed them.  But for now, I can't listen to this reverse bass stuff without wanting to get up and dance.