Inspired by the goth and early electro-industrial sounds of the 1980s and 1990s, a new generation of darkwave and synthwave producers have found novel variations and generated a music of 21st century nuance to its particulars. The balancing act of its particular brand of starkly minimal, angular, existential electronic dance pop of alienation and heartbreak is presented by The Guardian in, “‘The Body was the Drums, the Brain was the Synthesiser’: Darkwave, the Gothic Genre Lighting up Pop”. A cross-section of artists within this subgenre, Molchat Doma, The KVB, She Wants Revenge, Xeno & Oaklander, The Soft Moon, Twin Tribes, She Past Away, Drab Majesty, TR/ST, and Boy Harsher, express a spectrum of variations on an aesthetic of darkly romantic, sexually fetishistic, and imperially fatalistic thematic concerns. In describing Boy Harsher's sound as a "moving choker-collar muscle-mash" which "contains a dark power, an atavistic pull", the music press has rightly depicted the central components from which the variables pivot and deviate around. An overview of these concurrent, interrelated, and offshoot genres, and their contemporary revival was mapped by Vice in their, "A Brief History of Musical Waves from New to Next". Compilations like the now-classic, “The Minimal Wave Tapes: Volume One” focused on the coldwave and minimal wave strains, while the recent “No Songs Tomorrow: Darkwave, Ethereal Rock, and Coldwave 1981-1990”, present an all-inclusive cornucopia of variables within the subgenre.
Taken together, these compilations offer an overarching map of a sound that was born of the settling dust of the tumult of post-punk's upending of the topography of rock and noise music. Expressed through a more uneasy, existential, often edgier and sexually charged sound than their more commercial compatriots, darkwave retained its post-punk values while utilizing the same technology, and dancier, more upbeat tempos of new wave. Few contemporary artists embody this intersection of new wave and harder-edged sonic aesthetics than Belarusian artists, Molchat Doma. Their sound is a concoction of the recognizable components of synth-driven new wave, staccato drum machine, angular guitar and plodding bass of post-punk, with the additional reflection of a hauntological looking back to the monumental ruins of the Soviet era. In more senses than one, "Molchat Doma: Is Caught in the Crosshairs". Social media, relocating from Belarus to the United States, and signing to Sacred Bones the domestic haven of all things neo-goth, have contributed significantly to their rise in prominence within this scene. In doing so, they have also made new compatriots of labelmates like Sextile, and their electro-industrial sound as heard on "Push". On tour beginning this month in support of last year's "Belaya Polosa", Molchat Doma and Sextile will be channeling post-Soviet melancholia and fetishistically energized Los Angeles electro when they intersect for a night at The Showbox, Seattle.
