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.
I have neglected this blog after the last album last spring, while I've been releasing new tracks monthly, so here're some updates about music and life!
This was a heavy and downtempo track I composed and produced last spring that I felt really would fit well for some epic vocals. I've been compiling my own playlists on Spotify (more of which later on this blog) and that's how I found Tarot Blood who wrote the lyrics, vocal melodies and obviously delivered the amazing singing on this track.
Mixing the track with vocals was a bit of a process but luckily I got some professional help for the final mixdown and master by Syst3m Glitch.
We wanted to time the release of this haunting song for Halloween as it's got some gothic and mystic vibes and is really hard to put in any one genre, let alone in Synthwave.
Actually, by the way! I just got married earlier this month! Whaaaat?! yes that's right!
So coincidentally the track title is quite fitting. Though the lyrics are by Tarot Blood and not about me, haha!
Here's our official wedding picture with my beautiful Wi-Fie. Shot in front of the Helsinki Synth City Festival 2019 venue Ääniwalli in Helsinki Finland. Image by Kormugraphy.
Maverick
After the last album LIGHTYEARS I've released 4 singles. I want to highlight Maverick, a Top Gun (1986) film and soundtrack inspired song. Pure 80's vocals and lyrics by the awesome Syst3m Glitch. Stream on Spotify or on your favorite platform.
Playlists on Spotify
So I've been curating my own public playlists on Spotify for a few months now. I started with a playlist of some less heard or unknown but really sweet Synthwave & Retrowave. Tune in and give it a follow on Spotify!
The second playlist I started a bit later is for more hard and heavy hitting Cyberpunk synth tunes. Check out Cyberpunk FM.
What's next?
Almost exactly 2 years 1 month ago I released my first single Activation Sequence on this project. So happy 2-year birthday to Runaway Droid! Last year I wrote about my first year on producing Synthwave. The world and this scene has changed a lot since then. Definitely feels like more than a year. Since last October I've done my first 4 live performances as Runaway Droid, the last one in February. And then suddenly nobody got to play live anymore anywhere and the whole world shut down because of Covid-19. At the moment I'm not planning to do any live performances so let's revisit that topic some day the pandemic is over.
Something Blue is the first single from by forthcoming 5th Runaway Droid album. This one is going to be, at least I think so, a bit more musically unified and less random and leans more on the Cyberpunk side of Synthwave sounds. Expect huge hard hitting distortion basses as well some sweater cinematic instrumental themes and haunting pianos. The planned release time is during the first quarter of 2021.
