Be kind, rewind

It's tough to know what to do with all those 80s VHS cassettes you so lovingly collected back in the day by just paying one penny to Columbia House and waiting for them to arrive in the mail. Now that so many more options are available with better image and audio than VHS could ever provide, those well-loved, colorfully-cased little bricks are basically garbage, right? Perhaps... unless they are in fact the key to a super power you never dreamed of!

In today's video by the synthwave band Gunship, we enter a claymation universe where people have VCRs in their chests and can become their movie hero of choice just by inserting the proper tape. Need to fend off some bad guys? Simply insert Robocop or The Terminator. In fact, the name of the song, "Tech Noir," is taken from the name of a bar in The Terminator. Thanks to that movie, the phrase tech noir has now taken on a life of its own as typifying the retro-future blend of film noir and sci-fi that gives movies like The Terminator and Blade Runner such style and mood. 

That is certainly true of today's video, which even has a spoken intro by 80s film titan and synthwave godfather, John Carpenter. Carpenter narrated a documentary about synthwave that premiered at festivals last year called Rise of the Synths. Among many musicians, it features today's band, Gunship, as well as one of my favorite groups featured here last year, Carpenter Brut. Both bands combine the looks, sounds, and themes of all the best 80s genre films into a "neon soaked, late night, sonic getaway drive," as Gunship describes their music. So steal a car, pop Gunship in the tape deck, and let the feels flow!