Synthwave Sunday: Mega Drive, 198XAD
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One of synthwave’s most appealing characteristics — to this metalhead writer, anyway — is how fucking hard it goes. So, while we love the Mitch Murders of the world — in all their shiny, retro-pop glory — let’s get back to the business of banging our fucking heads to some goddamn synthesizers, shall we?
Dallas, TX-based Mega Drive skews on the brutal side of the synthwave spectrum, and his 2014 release 198XAD is probably the meatiest of the bunch. “Acid Spit” kicks things off with a steady, undulating rhythm that takes you… somewhere. Somewhere awesome. Are we inside a video game? Driving down a two-laner on a hot night with the windows down? In a space ship with stars whizzing by? Hiking through the arctic with ice grips, perhaps? The music is completely timeless and without location yet of a super-specific time in a super-specific place all the same; you could really be anywhere you want. Does it matter where? No. Close your eyes and get lost in it.
Even the ballads — or whatever we’re calling slow songs on synthwave records — go hard as fuck, as in the supremely-titled “Memory Dealer.” The track conjures images of a mysterious man in a fedora furtively roaming a trash-strewn, post-apocalyptic, ’80s retro-futuristic streetscape — bombed out cars littering the curbs at off-kilter angles — selling RAM chips hanging from the inside of his trenchcoat at the end of a dark alleyway with a single, yellow-hued streetlamp overhead. Black fucking market RAM. The absolute BEST memory money can buy, only available from the Memory Dealer. He can’t be caught; he’s above the law. But… his memory comes at a price! Literally and figuratively. Does it make sense? Just enough. Get lost in it.
Perhaps “Osaka Sewers” takes its namesake literally. I see the nimble, snaking lead keyboard line as the flow of the water gushing below, and the subtle cracking and popping of the simulated vinyl the snickering, sniveling rats of the underworld plotting nefarious schemes for world domination, their neon red, nuclear radiation-frosted eyes aglow with nothing but malice and hatred. “Exoskeleton” pulsates and grooves like a black, rickety (but all the better for it) Camaro tearing through the Sonoran Desert, saguaros passing by in a blur on either side, crows circling overhead.
And so on and so forth. Like I said, get lost in it.
Stream 198XAD below and buy it via Bandcamp.
Bonus: make sure you stream “Delta Protocol” from Mega Drive’s latest release Hardwired V1.4. It’s probably the single best song in his entire catalogue, and it may even be one of the best the synthwave genre has to offer. “Mainframe” from the same album isn’t far behind it.
