Synthwave borrows more from film than from any other source: its sound is a memory of 1980s screens, built from the scores of John Carpenter, Vangelis, Tangerine Dream and Giorgio Moroder. A peer-reviewed study argues that synthwave works in film and television as shorthand for "the 1980s", and traces it back to exactly those composers.[1] This page follows each strand, then shows the other direction: the film, TV and game soundtracks that synthwave artists have made, as they appear in the Frekvenci archive.
Why do film scores matter to synthwave?
Most of the music that synthwave imitates was never meant to stand alone. Film scores of the late 1970s and 1980s used a small number of synthesizers, a sequencer and a drum machine to produce mood in a few seconds, and they often had to be cheap and quick. Those constraints are the sound: short melodic cells, repeating bass figures, big pads that fill a scene.
Mattia Merlini's study of synthwave soundtracks makes the point that screen media often uses synthwave as a cue for the 1980s even when the music is new, and that the style can feel more 1980s than the real thing.[1] That gives film a special place in the genre's story. Some artists say they came to the sound through a screen: Timecop1983 told Vehlinggo that he turned to 1980s-style music after hearing Mitch Murder and the Drive soundtrack.[10] Many records are written as if they were scores for films that do not exist. The archive shows the habit in titles: Symmetry's Themes For An Imaginary Film is one, and Darksynth and Synthwave albums regularly style themselves as soundtracks.
John Carpenter
Carpenter wrote and performed the score for his own film Halloween (1978). Wikipedia says he scored it after a test screening where viewers told him the film was not scary, and gives three days as the time it took (Carpenter himself has claimed far less). It adds that the main theme is a piano melody in 10/8, described as a "complex 5/4".[2] The same page quotes critic James Berardinelli calling the score relatively simple and one of the film's strongest assets.[2] A repeating, instantly recognisable figure played on a few keyboards is close to a definition of the synthwave lead.
Carpenter's later career connects him directly to the revival. Lost Themes, made with his son Cody Carpenter and godson Daniel Davies, came out on 3 February 2015 on Sacred Bones Records. Carpenter said it was about having fun, free of film deadlines, and that the aim was a fuller sound than his old analogue-only work could give.[6] The archive lists 12 John Carpenter releases, all on Sacred Bones Records or Death Waltz, including soundtracks for Halloween III, Halloween Kills, Halloween Ends and Firestarter, and compilations such as Anthology: Movie Themes 1974-1998.
A caution on dates. The archive lists John Carpenter's Lost Themes under 2021, though Wikipedia gives the original release as 2015, so the archive's year is a reissue date. Any year on a Frekvenci record can be a reissue year.
Vangelis and Tangerine Dream
Vangelis worked on the Blade Runner score at Nemo Studios in London from December 1981 to April 1982, improvising cues while he watched scenes on video, according to Wikipedia. The most prominent instrument is the Yamaha CS-80, heard in the opening scenes, alongside Roland and Sequential Circuits synths and a drum machine.[3] The official album did not appear until 6 June 1994; in between, fans circulated bootlegs. That delay made the score a legend of its own, and it explains why so many synthwave records borrow its slow, wide, rain-lit sound.[3]
Tangerine Dream, the German electronic group founded in West Berlin in 1967 by Edgar Froese, scored more than 60 films by Wikipedia's count, including Sorcerer (1977) and Thief (1981), and its album Phaedra (1974) was among the first commercial records built on sequencers.[4] Sequencers matter because they produce the steady, pulsing bass lines that synthwave still uses. Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein of Survive, who scored Stranger Things, named Tangerine Dream, Giorgio Moroder and Eduard Artemyev as influences in a 2016 interview.[7]
Giorgio Moroder
Moroder links the dance floor to the cinema. Wikipedia credits him with pioneering Euro disco and notes his production of Donna Summer's "I Feel Love" (1977), the score for Midnight Express (1978) and later scores for Scarface, American Gigolo and Flashdance; he won three Academy Awards in all, for Midnight Express, Flashdance and Top Gun.[5] The same article says his synthesizer work influenced hi-NRG, Italo disco and synth-pop.[5] That is the film-score route to the pop side of synthwave, and our page on Italo disco and synthwave: the 1980s sound that keeps coming back follows the disco branch.
Drive and the modern soundtrack
The moment when the scene's own music reached the screen came with Drive, which premiered at Cannes on 20 May 2011 (US release 16 September). Its score is by Cliff Martinez, but its soundtrack also used two songs from the revival: Kavinsky's "Nightcall" and College's "A Real Hero" with Electric Youth.[8] Both are in the archive: Nightcall and A Real Hero. A decade later, the pattern kept going. Stranger Things (summer 2016) was scored by Survive's Dixon and Stein; the archive lists the Relapse Records album RR7349 and two later releases on the same label, RR7387 and RR7400.
What exactly gets borrowed?
It helps to separate four things a modern record can take from a 1980s score.
| Borrowed from | Example in the sources | What synthwave keeps |
|---|---|---|
| A single repeating theme | Carpenter's Halloween, a piano figure in 10/8[2] | The hummable lead over a loop |
| Sequenced bass | Tangerine Dream's Phaedra (1974), an early sequencer album[4] | The pulsing eighth-note bass |
| One dominant synthesizer voice | Vangelis's Yamaha CS-80 in Blade Runner[3] | Slow, wide, brassy pads |
| Pop-dance production | Moroder's I Feel Love and film songs[5] | Clean drums, bright hooks |
The table simplifies: few records use only one of these. But it explains why the same artist can sound like horror at one moment and like a night drive at the next. Darksynth leans on the first and second rows; Outrun and the pop-leaning branches lean on the third and fourth.
Horror needs a note of its own. Goblin's soundtrack for Dario Argento's Suspiria was released on 15 June 1977 and, according to Wikipedia's account, used Moog synthesizers (a Minimoog and a System 55) among its instruments; Bandcamp Daily's writer on horror synth suggests that many synth composers turn to horror because they absorbed Carpenter and Goblin.[11][12] Our page on What is horrorsynth? Synthwave for the slasher-movie crowd follows that line.
From screen to screen: Stranger Things, Katana ZERO and the games
Screens teach the sound and then ask for more of it. Stranger Things, whose first season arrived in 2016, is the best example. According to NME, the show's creators first contacted Survive in July 2015, and the band spent about six weeks making demos while competing for the job.[13] Games work the same way. Bandcamp Daily reports that the composers of Katana ZERO (2019) drew on 1980s house, electro and synth-pop, together with Gary Numan and Vangelis.[14] The game came out in April 2019; the archive lists that score, Katana ZERO – Original Soundtrack, under synthwave, and game soundtracks are a story of their own, told in Synthwave and video games: from Out Run to Hotline Miami.
The loop is worth noticing, because it explains why film keeps coming back in this genre's story. A 1980s score becomes a synthwave record; the record becomes a cue in a new film or game; the new film is made by people who grew up on the old ones. Merlini's argument that synthwave works as a stand-in for a remembered decade fits this loop closely: the 1980s that gets recreated is one assembled from screens as much as from the era itself.[1]
Synthwave artists who score films
The traffic goes both ways. Artists who learned the language of 1980s scores now write for screens, and the archive lists the results.
SHOW THE NUMBERS
| Year | Releases |
|---|---|
| 2016 | 1 |
| 2017 | 1 |
| 2018 | 1 |
| 2019 | 0 |
| 2020 | 1 |
| 2021 | 4 |
| 2022 | 3 |
| 2023 | 0 |
| 2024 | 1 |
| 2025 | 0 |
- Mitch Murder (Sweden) supplied music that is heavily featured in the 2015 short film Kung Fury; in a mid-2015 interview the film stood at about 19 million views, and the Hasselhoff-sung "True Survivor" at about 17 million.[9] The archive lists Kung Fury (Lost Tapes) and Megamagic: Wizards of the Neon Age OST, a 2016 soundtrack album, with 10 releases in all.
- Le Matos has 16 listed releases, including a Turbo Kid soundtrack album in 2015 and a second for Summer of 84 in 2018.
- Carpenter Brut has 19 listed releases, including the single "Night Stalker" on Lakeshore Records in 2017, the same label that issued the Drive album.[8]
- Survive and John Carpenter are covered above.
Read together, these entries bunch in 2015 to 2018, the years when the revival's own composers began to be hired by films, though that is only what this short list shows, not a statistic. The wider curve is in A short history of synthwave, from French blogs to the charts, and Synthwave in 2015: the year in the archive is the year page for the busiest of those seasons.
Following the scores into the genre guides
Each strand above has a home in the genre guides. The heavy, horror-cinema branch is the What is darksynth? The heavy, horror-lit side of synthwave, and its smaller cousin the What is horrorsynth? Synthwave for the slasher-movie crowd stays closest to the Carpenter and Goblin approach. The guitar-and-synth duo profiled in If you like Dance With the Dead: artists to try next show the method plainly: one of them has described writing with a horror film playing on mute. Moroder's pop-dance route runs through the Italo disco and synthwave: the 1980s sound that keeps coming back page and the Synthpop and synthwave: where the 1980s sound meets the revival page. Vangelis's wide, slow sound survives in the Dreamwave: synthwave's soft, nostalgic side and the cosmic Spacesynth: the cosmic, Italian-rooted corner of synthwave. And the car-and-sunset images that film shot so often are the territory of the Outrun music: the racing-game sound of synthwave.
Two other pages complete the picture. How synthwave is made: the sounds, the gear, the tricks explains what a sequencer does, which is the reason Tangerine Dream matters. How synthwave went mainstream: Drive, Stranger Things and Blinding Lights, against the release numbers follows the later trip of Drive and Stranger Things from the cinema and the sofa into pop culture.
A listening route: from the score to the revival
If you would like to hear the genealogy in order, this route moves from a source to the people who inherited it.
- Start with the 1970s and 1980s sources named above: Carpenter's Halloween theme, Vangelis's Blade Runner and Tangerine Dream's Sorcerer or Thief.
- Then listen to Carpenter's own turn to albums, John Carpenter's Lost Themes, and his later archive entries on Sacred Bones.
- Move to the heavy children: TRILOGY and Dangerous Days, then the artist guides If you like Carpenter Brut: artists to try next and If you like Perturbator: artists to try next.
- For bright and playful screen music, use If you like Mitch Murder: artists to try next.
- For the television version, If you like Survive: artists to try next lists the archive's other analogue-leaning acts, and Dark station (94.6 FM) on the radio covers the darker side.
Records to start with
Ten records that sit on the line between score and album, from the founders to the new generation.
- John Carpenter · 2021 · Sacred Bones Records · LPThe album where Carpenter turned from film to records in 2015; the archive date is a reissue.
- John Carpenter · 2018 · Death Waltz Recording Company · LPCarpenter's score for the third Halloween film, in the archive as an LP from 2018.
- John Carpenter · 2024 · Sacred Bones Records · OTHERA 2024 entry in the Lost Themes series.
- Le Matos · 2015 · Fantôme Records · LPThe 2015 Turbo Kid soundtrack on Fantôme Records.
- Mitch Murder · 2015 · self-released · LPMitch Murder's Kung Fury set, self-released in 2015.
- Survive · 2016 · Relapse Records · LPThe 2016 Relapse album from the band behind Stranger Things.
- Le Matos · 2018 · Death Waltz Recording Company · OTHERA 2018 soundtrack release on Death Waltz.
Questions people ask about film scores and synthwave
Is synthwave just film music?
No. Film scores are one source, and the pop-dance records of Moroder and the arcade music of the same decade are two more. Synthwave also differs from a score in structure: a score serves a scene, while a synthwave track has to hold a listener for four minutes with no picture.
Do synthwave artists get hired to score real films?
Yes, and the archive shows several. Le Matos has soundtrack albums for Turbo Kid and Summer of 84, Mitch Murder's music is featured in Kung Fury, and Survive's members scored Stranger Things. Carpenter Brut released a single on the label that issued the Drive album.
Which 1980s scores should I hear first?
The ones this page cites: the Halloween theme for the short repeating lead, Blade Runner for slow wide pads, and a Tangerine Dream film score such as Sorcerer for sequenced bass. Together they cover most of what you hear in a modern darksynth or night-drive record.
Where to listen
For score-like, dark and cinematic music, the Dark station (94.6 FM) is the closest Frekvenci radio station; for road-movie synth, the Night Drive station (92.0 FM). To see everything by the artists above, browse all synthwave releases or open an artist page and follow their label links.
Sources
- More 1980s than the 1980s: Hauntological and Hyperreal Meanings of Synthwave Soundtracks · Mattia Merlini, Sound Stage Screen 3(1), 2023
- Halloween (1978 film), music section · Wikipedia (used as a map to its references)
- Blade Runner (soundtrack) · Wikipedia (used as a map to its references)
- Tangerine Dream · Wikipedia (used as a map to its references)
- Giorgio Moroder · Wikipedia (used as a map to its references)
- Lost Themes · Wikipedia (used as a map to its references)
- S U R V I V E Are Already Onto Even Stranger Things · Oliver Kinkel, VICE, 21 Sep 2016
- Drive (2011 film) · Wikipedia (used as a map to its references)
- Catching Up With Mitch Murder, King of the 80s Revival · Aaron Vehling, Vehlinggo, 26 Jul 2015
- What Does the Future Hold for Timecop1983? · Aaron Vehling, Vehlinggo, 1 Jul 2015
- Suspiria (1977 soundtrack) · Wikipedia (used as a map to its references)
- Synth Records Designed to Scare · Jeff Treppel, Bandcamp Daily, 3 Jan 2018
- An Interview With S U R V I V E, the band behind the Stranger Things score · Helen Meriel Thomas, NME, 2 Aug 2016
- On the Katana ZERO Score, Synthwave Goes Neo-Noir · Shaun Brady, Bandcamp Daily, 13 May 2019