Half the internet has been losing the plot in the last week or so to Stranger Things – the biggest TV binge epidemic of recent times.
Stranger Things is a supernatural chiller set in 1983, with a self-conscious nod to horror and sci-fi of the day – the schoolboy heroes have posters of John Carpenter’s The Thing and the Evil Dead; missing boy Will is trapped in some radio-wave electricity dimension, Poltergeist-style, and the misty jump scenes are right up an alley on Elm Street.
But the biggest mainline of 80s nostalgia is the soundtrack, and especially the opening credits – arpeggiated analogue synths, minimal pulses and discordant dark ambience straight from the synth patches of John Carpenter or Brad Fiedel.
The soundtrack is by S U R V I V E, a four-piece synth act from Texas in the vein of retrowave synth artists like Timecop1983 and Le Matos, with added menace.
S U R V I V E have announced that the Stranger Things soundtrack is “coming soon”, and they’ve also announced a new album RR7349 on Relapse Records, following fellow synth act Zombi on the the renowned grindcore/death metal label.
They’ve shared one track so far from RR7349 – the mid-tempo dread of A.H.B., with its synth leads wafting menacingly in and out of sync, a classic one note skipped heartbeat bassline and a hissy voice in the machine dirge finale.
It’s also got the best album sleeve I’ve seen this year – you can physically feel the synth lines oozing out of it.
Moo Kid 