Synthwave Premiere: Perturbator Remixes Mega Drive’s “I Am the Program,” Announces B-Sides, Remixes and Rarities Collection
With the surprise-release of New Model in 2017, Perturbator pledged to break away from his synthwave roots once and for all, stepping sideways into the dark industrial realm and leaving a giant question mark towards the future. Perturbator’s bold move is bittersweet. On one hand, knowing that one of the genre’s absolute best will be moving into new territory is melancholic, and we’ll no doubt miss him. On the other, the guy is one of the inventors of modern synthwave and can do whatever the fuck he pleases. He seems to have identified a saturation point in the genre’s meteoric rise to popularity and instead of capitalizing on that he’s chosen to push ahead into the next phase. Frankly, more artist should make such brave decisions instead of becoming stuck in their ways forever; bravo to you, good sir.
But before all of that Perturbator will go out with one last synthwave bang, a two-volume, two-hour set of B-Side, rarities and remixes called, appropriately enough, B-Sides and Remixes and featuring nearly all of Perturbator’s rare early work. While much of this material has been available through various accounts on YouTube, Soundcloud, Bandcamp etc. for years, it’s never before been collected all in one place like this and there’s a good chance that the vast majority of Perturbator’s fans — especially the new ones — have never heard this stuff before.
Volume 1 and Volume 2 of B-Sides and Remixes will both come out on November 16th via synthwave pioneers Blood Music (pre-order here). For starters, from Volume 1, we’ve got this bangin’ Perturbator remix of Mega Drive’s “I Am the Program,” which somehow manages to go even harder than the original by some calculated certain liberties with both the beat and melodic construction. If you haven’t heard this one before, and a track featuring both Perturbator and Mega Drive’s talents seems like an all-star combo too be good to be true… early synthwave was a fucking rad era, man. Enjoy.
