The Sin of Synth
 

I do believe its time we had a thread devoted to the discussion, appreciation, disparaging and education of synth music in all its wonders.

Some favorites. Most of them come from the movies and the TV.

Jan Hammer
It's Over - Cocaine Cowboys
Payback - Miami Vice
Crockett's theme - Miami Vice

Harold Faltermeyer
The Running Man theme
Top Gun theme

Giorgio Moroder
Midnight Express theme
Chase - Midnight Express
Tony's theme - Scarface
Tears (OK, no synth but damn!)
Donna Summer - I Feel Love

Vince DiCola
Training Montage - Rocky IV
Ivan Drago Suite

Laura_Branigan - Self Control
Glass Candy - Digital Versicolor
Chromatics - Shining Violence

Can anyone list more or superior examples than the above? Perhaps some from old anime or a cruddy VHS fitness video?

Most in keeping with the spirit of Moroder, Italians Do It Better, et al -
M83 - Midnight City

The fucking synth lead at the end the world enters at 3:15 -
LCD Soundsystem - Yeah (Crass Version)

Kavinsky - Nightcall. It's the most recent one I can think of!

The FEZ soundtrack is one of my favorite soundtracks that came out recently.

Any of Vangelis's stuff where he mixed classical piano with synth is totally awesome.

The Mysterious Cities of Gold had some really cool sounding tracks. I really love 80s weirdness like that.

The Ultima: Exodus Remix album has some really cool 80s synth sounds. The Eternal Castle Britannia has this really rich tone to the synth mixed with (synthesized? sampled?) camera sounds which works somehow, I dunno, it's weird.

Bringing up Giorgio without mentioning The Neverending Story? For shame!

I'm partial to this stuff myself:

DAF- Des Mussolini

I...actually had no idea that Jan Hammer did soundtracks. Interesting!

W-what, I think he's most known from his Miami Vice stuff. Wikipedia seems to agree at least partially.

I've never even seen Miami Vice! I know him from Mahavishnu and his solo work and Al DiMeola team-up stuff. I guess I just never looked further into his work.

man, ravinoff's gonna go nuts when he sees this thread. I can't wait to listen to all of this when I get home!

Tangerine Dream has their ups and downs, but I really like Canyon Dreams, their answer to Koyaanisqatsi. Also Tangram, Turn of the Tides, and Mars Polaris, and their most disturbing album, Zeit.

The soundtrack to Einhander, by Black Mages keyboardist Kenichiro Fukui, is right awesome. One of the great things about that game is how the music is cued up to the auto-scrolling action.

Great input, class. There's stuff I can't believe didn't come to mind instantly like Tangerine Dream. The entire Drive soundtrack counts obviously. Nicolas Winding Refn needs to share his entire iPod playlist with the whole world at this point.

Some songs that I like very much from the Tekken 4 soundtrack sound sort of synthy to me. Airport and Authentic Sky are awwwwesome. =O

Jon Anderson and Vangelis: The Friends of Mister Cairo

Anamanaguchi: Airbase (ultimate Mega Man 2 pastiche)

Jethro Tull: Black Sunday

Rush: The Camera Eye

Camel: Lady Fantasy

Yellow Magic Orchestra: Technopolis (but really, anything by YMO)

Love Spy is also super great (sgreat)

Has anybody ever done a proper feature story in English about how the YMO are the wellspring of basically all Japanese game music up through at least like 1994?

No, but I use them in our podcasts sometimes...?

I'd love to write something about YMO and other Japanese bands that influenced game music (like Pageant, Mr. Sirius, Gerard, Novela...), but I fear that the internet would refuse to care.

You might know the Human League from "Don't You Want Me" but the rest of the album is really awesome.

these aren't all synth pioneers but

stevie wonder - boogie on reggae woman
beach boys - solar system
suicide - rocket usa
the residents - moisture
prince - do yourself a favor
scott walker - sleepwalker's woman

almost forgot

flock of seagulls - wishing (if i had a photograph of you)

...I feel like all of the new age music my parents played when I was kid that wasn't Enya was just the Miami Vice soundtrack. It all sounded like that. Crockett's theme must've been on some Narada collection or something. It was on Pure Moods! Oh wait, I bought that...

My boyfriend's gotten me into Ladytron, which has a lot of fun synth-y sounds, especially in their earlier work, like True Mathematics.

Although to be honest, while I have a lot of synth-y sounding stuff in my collection, I think they're mostly distorted sampling. It's kind of hard to tell sometimes!

Jean-Michel Jarre:

Oxygene Part 4
Magnetic Fields Part 2

I love John Carpenter's soundtracks, especially the Escape from New York theme.

Is there anyone who doesn't genuinely enjoy Axel F? Because if you say you don't like it because it's overplayed or they used it on that one Family Guy, then I'll just have to kick your damn head off. In fact, if there's any reason you don't like Axel F, I'm still going to kick your damn head off.

WTF is this brass band shit?

I have no idea what you're talking about.

Dude, sometimes I think you're just not putting enough effort into your posts.

That's because I don't give 90% of a shit. Now I regret changing it to the right song.