Sovietwave is dreamy electronic music made, mostly since the 2010s, by people who look back at the late Soviet Union: its space-age optimism, its radio and film archives, and the synth-pop and new wave of the 1980s. Bandcamp Daily calls it more a mood than a fixed sound.[1] The Frekvenci archive lists 34 sovietwave releases from 12 artists, a tiny scene by our standards and one of the oddest in the catalogue. It is one of the smaller branches in our map of synthwave's subgenres.
What is sovietwave?
Start with synthwave's picture of the 1980s, all sports cars and neon malls, and then point the camera east. Sovietwave's 1980s has Sputnik, cosmonauts, utopian housing blocks and children's science-fiction films. Writer Zsófia Tóth argues that it is not praise for the state at all: the pull is toward a promised future that never came, set against synthwave's glossier, consumer-minded dream.[2]
Because of that, the label works as a mood before it works as a genre. A founder of one of the scene's online communities told Bandcamp Daily the style stays vague and can run from dreamy to dark.[1] Wikipedia notes that audiences are mostly in post-Soviet countries, though listeners from elsewhere join in.[3] In the archive's genre tree it sits under the dreamwave family: Dreamwave is its neighbour, not Outrun.
Where does it come from?
Bandcamp Daily dates the start to the early 2010s, when listeners and producers rediscovered the electronic and pop music of the USSR.[1] Wikipedia adds that until about 2014 many of the acts now associated with the name were filed as indie or lo-fi, that the sound spread through the late 2010s, and that festivals followed, including Volna-1 in St Petersburg in 2018 and Volna-2 in Moscow in 2019.[3] That is why we do not name a first sovietwave artist or a founder: the label was applied after the fact.
The ancestors are real bands, and the story of how their music travelled is part of the appeal. Bandcamp Daily's guide sketches six late-Soviet groups. One, Alliance, made a 1987 album that first reached listeners on a home-copied cassette and only got an official release long afterwards; Kofe, from Leningrad, had a record that also circulated unofficially; Kino, the best known, began in 1982.[1] Wikipedia lists further touchstones such as Soviet film and animation scores and the composers Eduard Artemyev and Aleksandr Zatsepin.[3]
What does it sound like?
Expect some of these, rarely all at once:
- Soft synthesizers and slow beats. Wikipedia places it near chillwave and lists lo-fi, ambient, new wave and late-USSR synth-pop among the ingredients.[3]
- Found sound. Radio broadcasts, speeches and educational films are common source material, though not every record uses them.[3]
- Space-age titles. Look at the archive: Pulse of the Universe, Interstellar Expedition, Higher than the Stars, Flight over the Morning City.
- Cold-wave and post-punk edges on the darker side, as Bandcamp's guide notes.[1]
A slow beat, a half-heard announcer and a title about the stars: that combination is the quickest way to recognise the style.
Sovietwave vs synthwave
Both borrow 1980s synthesizers and both are nostalgic, and the resemblance ends there. Synthwave looks west, through film and arcade screens; sovietwave looks at the Space Race and the state's own picture of the future.[2] In the records listed here, sovietwave also runs slower, with more room around each note, whereas synthwave leans on big hooks. Both tags are loose, so exceptions are everywhere. If you want the Western side first, start with the main synthwave guide.
Sovietwave in the archive
This is a small tag, so every number is a handful of artists, not a movement. The first listed year is 2015. The peak is 2020, with 9 releases.
SHOW THE NUMBERS
| Year | Releases |
|---|---|
| 2015 | 3 |
| 2016 | 0 |
| 2017 | 2 |
| 2018 | 6 |
| 2019 | 3 |
| 2020 | 9 |
| 2021 | 5 |
| 2022 | 0 |
| 2023 | 1 |
| 2024 | 5 |
| 2025 | 0 |
The gaps are part of the picture. Nothing is listed for 2016 or 2022, and only one release for 2023. A quiet scene is one reading. The other is coverage: small Russian-language releases are the likeliest to be missing from MusicBrainz and Discogs, the sources behind the archive. The second reading fits the label data. Only 3 labels in the tag have a Frekvenci page, and just 6 of the 34 releases are flagged self-released, so for most of these records the label is simply absent from the data.
Where are the artists? Country is known for 94% of the releases, high for a tag this small. Russia and Canada tie at 12 releases each, then Ukraine with 5; Estonia, Belarus and the United States have one each. The Canadian figure comes from a single artist, Project Lazarus, who has 12 of the 34 sovietwave releases and 23 listed in all. The scene is not only post-Soviet: its imagery draws in producers well outside the old borders.
Look at the tags that travel with it. All but one release also carries synthwave. Then come lo-fi on 15, downtempo and vaporwave on 12 each, and synth-pop on 7. Its nearest neighbours are the slow, hazy corner of the electronic spectrum, which is also where synthwave in Russia overlaps with it.
Records to start with
Titles are translated where the original is Russian. Listed oldest to newest, so you can follow the tag across its decade.
- Бежевая Луна · 2015 · EP"Dawn", a 2015 release by Бежевая Луна; one of the oldest entries in the archive.
- Протон-4 · 2015 · LP"Pulse of the Universe", a 2015 album by Протон-4, with the cosmic theme in the title.
- Марксэн · 2017 · EP"World on the Screen", a 2017 EP by Марксэн, a name that doubles as a label in our data.
- Суперюность · 2018 · SINGLE"Flight over the Morning City", a 2018 single by Суперюность.
- Товарищ Астроном · 2018 · self-released · LP"Willow", a self-released 2018 album by Товарищ Астроном ("Comrade Astronomer").
- Aloepole · 2021 · Sovietwave Records · LPA 2021 album on Sovietwave Records, one of the few releases here with a named label.
- Project Lazarus · 2024 · SINGLEA 2024 single whose title translates as "The past will always remain the future", which sums up the idea better than any definition.
Where to listen
Cyrillic is the catch. Many artists and titles here are written in the original script, so search that way and use artist pages to see everything a name has put out. For atmosphere, the Dreams station (88.1 FM) on Frekvenci radio is the nearest mood and the Deep station (98.5 FM) covers the slower end. The whole tag is on the sovietwave list. For sound closer to chillwave, try the dreamwave guide. And remember that a blank year in our chart is a gap in the databases at least as much as a gap in the scene.
Sources
- A Guide to Sovietwave · Ana Leorne, Bandcamp Daily, 16 Nov 2020
- The past that never came — the Sovietwave phenomenon · Zsófia Tóth, Hype & Hyper, 14 Dec 2022
- Sovietwave (used as a map to its references) · Wikipedia