If you like 80’s-influenced energetic electronic music, enjoy the following songs with headphones.
Carpenter Brut on Bandcamp
Carpenter Brut on Soundcloud
Carpenter Brut on Youtube
Carpenter Brut on Wikipedia
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Great power and energy in these tracks.
Heard lots and lots of great things about them, but mostly covers so far. Seems they´re the latest and greatest, as the cool kids say these days…
You had me at “If”!
In general the only new song by anyone from all of last year that I cared in any way about was this:
Hot damn, did this thing even chart? How was this not a huge hit?!
Yes, their energy and the fast rhythms are two of the feature that I like most.
Really? I never realized that they were popular.
I listen to a lot of electronic/chip music, both indie and “mainstream”, and I was surprised to discover Carpenter Brut very late, just this May.
Even if I love some songs by Daft Punk, it took me a few seconds of Carpenter Brut listening to immediately wish the soundtrack of “Tron: Legacy” to be re-composed by them. 
It’s very good. I didn’t know them, I don’t listen to a lot of heavy metal, save some old Dream Theater songs.
I’m listening to some of their songs. “Cirice” and “From the pinnacle to the pit” are more my cup of tea, though. I’m reading that “Cirice” won a Grammy Award. I think it’s well deserved.
Asking me what´s popular is like asking a goat what the best milk is…I´m also bad with metaphors.
I´m still waiting for the day I get tired of Images and Words and Awake…still waitin´.
It’s a rock song. Rock is dead (in the mainstream) – don’t ya know?
Hey, it pains me too. I grew up loving rock music and still listen to it a lot to this day.
On topic, I also grew up with an awful lot of Jean Michel Jarre and Tangerine Dream, who are among my favourite electronic composers of all-time. RIP Edgar Froese.
Also listening to a lot of KMFDM recently, which is kind of relevant to Carpenter Brut because they both combine obvious rock elements with electronica, but KMFDM are more on the rock side with their rippling and high-octane riffs.
I only really like Images and Words these days of their albums. I used to be much more heavily into them and typically once I like music I don’t stop liking it later but that didn’t happen with DT, and yet I still love my '90s punk rock bands instead.
Grunge was really the last thing that meant something wasn´t it? I mean, people still care for that while I know a lot of people who are ashamed of having been into Nu Metal back in the day.
I told them back then but they wouldn´t listen!
Isn´t it great that they managed to attract a new audience that late in their career with the soundtrack to Grand Theft Auto 5? The “parachuting theme” is handsdown the best original tune on that soundtrack. First the experimental albums of the 70s, then like almost every movie score of the 80s and finally gaming soundtracks. What a career!
I feel the same, as an album it has the most long lasting appeal for me. It´s pretty damn near a perfect album and Metropolis Part 1 a perfect song (for it´s genre), I mean Learning To Live…no Pull Me Under…no Under A Glass Moon…no…terrific album, probably because I like it´s sound, they didn´t have that after that.
On TD – yep, what a splendid and extensive career and library they have, and Edgar was tremendously instrumental in cultivating their sound of course. I really like the pause menu theme from GTA V, and introspecting to it while it morphs seamlessly into different tonal and timbral configurations of similar pitch material.
It’s quite antithetical to the Carpenter Brut posted earlier, and an awful lot of TD’s music made me introspect deeply on many aspects of life and being.
The end of Tangram remains as one of the most crushingly haunting moments in music I know.
Learning To Live is my fave DT song and Met Pt.1 is right up there.
Regarding styles of rock, I’ve liked many and don’t think quality ceased post-'90s but it’s lost its place in the mainstream. I’ve mainly listened to The Alan Parsons Project and Jethro Tull recently for more interesting and progressive sounding rock stuff, so clearly my biases, for rock music specifically, still tend to lie pre-2000.
More TD…
2:40 is one of my fave sonic auras that TD have created. Sometimes the most inspired material just comes about through loosely planned improvisation.
A monster track for the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony, which helps to depict the industrial revolution…
Last one for now… a pretty new track that I’m besotted with:
Give it time and it will hopefully sweep you through one hell of a ride.
“Image and Words” was a revelation to me because until that moment I never had listened to heavy metal. It also happened in a very special moment of my life, some sort of “cultural renaissance” during which I started to heavily develop for the Amiga and interact with other digital artists. Dream Theater were introduced to me by the musician of the group of computer geeks I was part of.
I listened to “Pull me under” and “Take the time” so many times that the two songs are probably forever engraved in my DNA helix. Back then I was also able to sing them.
I listened a lot of Jean Michel Jarre before being captivated by more energetic kinds of electronic music.
Today I’m not able to find old electronic music artists that satisfy me (except for Moroder, maybe) like the recent indie musicians, who I discovered mainly thanks to Monstercat.
Currently I listen to a lot of sub-genres: glitch hop, chip music, etc. Here are a few examples:
“Bad Boy” by Razihel:
“Back and Forth” by Haywyre:
“DisChipo” by the spectacular FantomenK:
“Throwing Fire” by the very peculiar Ronald Jenkees:
Oh, about videogame soudtracks, Carpenter Brut did one of the songs for Hacknet.
Here is the soundtrack (all electronic music) of the game on YouTube.
Yeah, Haywyre is one of my favourites. Spamming Monstercat is a good way of discovering new artists in the world of EDM.
… from Matrix & Futurebound - Universal Truth (drum and bass)
There’s just tons and tons of new 80’s influenced synth music. I think Hotline Miami game made it more mainstream recently. Perturbator even played some gigs at rock / metal festivals. I was interested in the scene but honestly after some time, albums start to sound very similar as it’s often case with instrumental music. Just check out BloodMusic Youtube channel. Still, there’s some very good stuff there. I love albums that was influenced by John Carpenter soundtracks (obviously Carpenter Brut seems to be one of those). It seems like horror and TV shows like Knight Rider are two main inspirations of the new retro synth wave.
Actually I was pretty sure TWP will take advantage of this as it seemed a natural fit for the time and theme of the game (oops, I made on-topic in off-topic) but there’s barely any 80’s music on the soundtrack.
Here’s a Perturbator album.
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Just a few hours ago I was browsing Valenberg’s pixel-art gallery on Deviantart. 
For Perturbator he made the graphics of this video (NSFW):
There’s all that Synthwave going around.
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I have noticed there seems to be a lot computer geeks among Dream Theater fans, why do you think is that?
Yes, I admit to initially being dissapointed when I heard the main theme with it´s 60s Surf Guitar. But I guess it brought it closer to Twin Peaks and that show´s soundtrack. In the end I think it works for the game as the music in the backround is meant to be barely noticable. For Hotline Miami the music is meant to get you into a groove because it is kind of a ryhthm based game. The only serious 80s vibe I get from Tuna Head and maybe the Quickie Pal theme.
Since we´re posting synth wave videos:
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Just wait for this upcoming adventure game, then:
Graphics by Valenberg.
Music by MASTER BOOT RECORD.
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Well, it would have to be more ambient and relaxed than Hotline Miami but that’s not a problem. It’s a staple of synth based music. The biggest music disappointment in TWP was the radio station. It seemed like a perfect place to put on some cheesy 80’s music. Maybe even crowd sourced, I know I would loved to contribute.
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You know, I was well aware that they couldn´t go all out GTA Vice City and have a ton of licensed music on the radio station. But doing “new old” music hadn´t occured to me, I like that idea!
I never realized that and I don’t have an answer for that.
Back then I considered Petrucci one of the most “technical” guitarists out there and we (nerdy teenagers) appreciated especially the high-speed and high-pitched parts, so it’s possible that there was an unconscious connection with chip music, that we also loved.
Don’t you consider “No Quarter” a cheesy 80’s music? I do.
I have realized that for some reason Ron can’t stop working on this game, so I don’t exclude that they might enrich that part of the game in future. 