As my old theme ran out of juice and started to act up I decided to design and build my site from scratch. As a result the old blog posts are currently missing images but hopefully the site is a bit nicer and easier to use.
It's new album time again! 'Dangerous' is my 6th album as Runaway Droid since 2018. Huh. That's a lot of albums. Luckily Spotify has made this regularly updating playlist of the essential tracks, great for any new listeners to check out the discography.
Dangerous
While the last album 'V' was all about Cyberpunk and cinematic vibes, 'Dangerous' is a return to the happier and lighter 80's sound with more uptempo tracks. This time I didn't include any tracks with vocals and kept the theme more or less the same to have a tighter package. Should be a good soundtrack for driving a car at night. Like Synthwave is meant to.
Some of the tracks were made already right after 'Lightyears' in the spring of 2020 and some a year later. So I have a lot of unreleased tracks I chose not to include on the album, but I'm planning to release an Extended Edition with probably 20+ tracks at some point. A few with vocals / vocoder in that bunch.
There are 5 completely new tracks, 5 already released as singles and a remix of 'Time Warp' from my first album.
1, 2, 3... 4... What the hell? Yes, it's my 5th album as Runaway Droid. Crazy! Anyways, it's out today on all streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music, more links here. If you're old school or would really like to support all my music is also available for purchase on Bandcamp! For lyrics and more info checkout the album page for V on this site.
V
This album differs from my previous releases as it has a sort of a more unified theme and feel to it. Whereas my previous releases have been more or less sort of compilations of the music I liked to make at the time.
V is more dark and heavy from start to finish. I have my musical roots in playing metal and rock guitar in bands, so that melancholy and dark tones are where I always seem to come back to at some point. The oddest bird on the album is called "Weaponized". I don't know what genre that is. Don't ask.
I also dug back to some musical themes I composed during my band years and gave them another spin as instrumentals on Cryogenics and Time.
I'd sum this album as some sort of mix of Synthwave, Cyberpunk, Electronic Rock and film/game music(?).
Collaborations
On this album I have two collab tracks but three collaborators. The track number 2. called Elements was an instrumental I wanted to have vocals on. So I sent it to my old band mate an vocalist R0kyu here in Helsinki and got back a really cool chorus melody and lyrical theme. At this point the track started to feel even more like Linkin Park, So why not have rap on verses?! And when I want rap Mark Cooper from Detroit is the man for the job! After Elements I used the same chorus melody on piano to make a nice instrumental piece called Resolution to carry out the theme.
The track number 6. Something Blue was released as a single last autumn for Halloween. Featuring another amazing vocalist from the U.S. Tarot Blood wrote the lyrics and vocal melody over my instrumental piece.
TRACKLIST:
Cloud Collapse
Elements (feat. R0kyu & Mark Cooper)
Resolution
Growl
Cryogenics
Something Blue (feat. Tarot Blood)
Reassembled
The Convergence
Weaponized
Time
Killswitch (Killmix)
Elements (Instrumental)
Something Blue (Instrumental)
Now What?
I'm already working on the next album... Okay that's a big fat lie. Because it's actually pretty much done. But let's focus on this release for a while first? All I can say the 6th album will be pretty much the opposite to this one. If V is dark and melancholy the next one is more Synthwave, more Outrun, more summer and more fun!
In the meantime waiting for the Covid vaccine and working remotely pretty much the past year. Maybe we can travel and have live gigs some day again?
