1st Edition
Making Synthwave How an Online Music Community Invented a Genre
1. From Synthetix.FM to Stranger Things (2016-2025) Making Synthwave Subcultural Capital 2. Making Synthwave Music with Music Technology 3. Metalheads in the Synthwave Community – Making Darksynth 4. Making Space for Vocals and Women: The Vocal Synthwave Subgenre 5. Making ‘Live’ Synthwave Performances – Tensions in Live Synthwave Practices 6. Keeping Synthwave ‘Alive’: Key Organisations, Events and Community Practices On/Offline
Biography
Jess Blaise Ward (Leeds Beckett University, UK) is a synth artist and researcher of genre formation, online music communities, subcultural theory and feminist scholarship. Past publications include Who remembers post-punk women? (2019) and her paper on metalheads in the online synthwave community at the Internet Musicking conference (2022).
‘Making Synthwave captures the complexities, passion, politics, and sounds that make this genre so meaningful. Tracing a compelling narrative of the key players in the synthwave community of practice, the book reveals a sophisticated investigation with rigour, richness, and depth that pays wonderful attention to the subtleties of genre studies.’
Laura Glitsos, Senior Lecturer, Coordinator of Media and Cultural Studies at the School of Arts and Humanities, Edith Cowan University, Australia
‘Making Synthwave is an in-depth account of a musical genre that is little studied, but has a distinctive presence in popular culture through its close connection with film, TV and videogames. Through close musical analysis and interviews with musicians, podcasters, label heads and more, Jess Blaise Ward astutely navigates the interplay of online and offline creative and community-building activity that has contributed to the formation of synthwave, from YouTube tutorials and Reddit groups to gigs and festivals.’
Frances Morgan, author of Delian Modes: Listening for Delia Derbyshire in Histories of Electronic Dance Music
