Artist of the Week: Sunset Neon

I’m Bret and I do a musical project called Sunset Neon that’s all music that sounds like it came from a VHS from 1987, then was sampled and chopped up into glitchy nu disco funk action.  I also do a project called Blue Stahli that swings everywhere from heavy dark electronic rock to cinematic sound design weirdness, and even some pop.

I think I called it “glitchy retro nostalgia pop” at one point, probably before being slapped for that.  It’s multi-genre, but generally sticks to sounding like the soundtrack to a beat up videotape remixed into funkiness and indiepop.

I love the choppy rhythmic sample flipping of people like Justice and SebastiAn (and the more experimental side of that with people like VHS Head) and soundtracks to 80s b-movies.

For Sunset Neon, it’s all about the feel of a cassette tape of the soundtrack to your favorite 80s flick being listened to for the hundredth time.  Hazy nostalgia and half-remembered summer movies all colliding in your head.

The goal was to make “every cheesy training montage happening all at once”.  Also, I hadn’t really done much in the way of guitars on this record, so a full on fun rock song is a good way to shake things up.

It all came together pretty quickly.  Well, quickly for me anyway.  I put this sucker together in about 5 months while going back and forth between Los Angeles and Detroit.  With the exception of “Tonight”, all the music was done in a tracker (Renoise, which is a modernized version of the stuff I used to use in the 8bit DOS days).  Something about piecing this all together with hexadecimal and old school sequencing in the same way I started making music in the first place, was just magical.

I’d like have the beginnings of the next Sunset Neon single underway (there are some guest vocalists that will be super fun if I can swing ‘em) and have some of the darker, more industrialized weirdness of Blue Stahli grinding along as well!

For sure David Bowie.  Though since he’s returned to space, David Lynch.

For a track like “After Hours” it came from not knowing what the hell i was going to do, so I just started manipulating drum sounds and experimenting with how much I could make them sound like a broken VHS tape.  Other songs have started from singing a vocal melody into my phone recorder and then trying to work out just what in the hell kind of music should carry it along.

Honestly, I just hope people connect with it.  Whether they’re just having fun with it, or find some meaning and have something that lifts them up a bit, it’s just there for you.

Damn good coffee.

Cherry pie.

Front 242 – Work 242 N.Off is N.Off

Twin Peaks: The Return . . . ALL the way.