“Described by one youtube connoisseur as CIA torture music, but I'm pretty sure they're wrong.”
Plug in and power up: Melbourne's Modern Ideas crafts garage-born '80s synth-pop where "plastic dreams and electric romance" collide — dramatic, cinematic, and beautifully contradictory in the vein of Depeche Mode and New Order. SOFT RIOT's Crux channels early '80s DIY synth spirit into minimalist, mildly psychedelic post-punk balancing space, rhythm, and subtle humor. Chris of Wilderness gets sonically dense and adventurous with hardware samplers, resampled xylophone, and lyrics diving into the "paranoid circus of the panopticon." Oski XD Doski blends lofi post-eggpunk energy with dark janglepop, while Montreal's Ways of Hiding delivers post-punk new wave grit.