Tom: Michelle sends this in, describing it as “cyberpunk synthpop”–
Tim: Oooh, that’s new.
Tom: Well, more like “from the mid-90s”, but clearly it’s new to you.
Tim: Oh.
Tom: Anyway, Michelle adds a warning that the vocoder they use is a bit cheesy.
Tim: That…that really is quite the vocoder.
Tom: Okay, minor video gripe here first: can we stop it with the digital displays that just show slowly moving zeros and ones? I know they’re going for a 90s cyberpunk theme, but we’ve moved so far past that.
Tim: Unless, keeping with a cyberpunk theme, it’s an encoded message. But I don’t remotely care enough to type everything out to find out.
Tom: And how on earth you’re meant to solder something with that much flashing light going on, I’ve got no idea. ANYWAY. The music. I basically sent this to you because that’s a really good chorus.
Tim: It’s a fantastic chorus, it really really is, though almost to the detriment of the rest of it – I already found the synthed vocal line irritating (if it’s turned up so far you can’t make out the words, just don’t bother), but having heard the chorus I have another reason for wanting the fairly dull verse to get out of way.
Tom: Yes, the vocoder’s turned up way too high, yes, the choruses aren’t all that inspiring, but that’s the kind of synthpop chorus that I rather like, and it’s rather nice that the genre’s still producing things like that even if it’s extremely unlikely they’re going to make it to the mainstream.
Tim: It is. It’s reminiscent of some of the later tracks on the dance compilation CDs I went through a phase of buying about a decade ago, in a great, great way.