The Powerwalker talks about new album. #SYNTHWAVE

The Powerwalker – The Neon Eclipse EP [Full EP]

0:00 The Sky Goes Dark (Intro)
1:57 The Hunt
6:37 Vibrant Twilight
11:53 Surge Incoming
16:37 A Cosmic Corpse
22:10 Flee the City
26:26 The Neon Eclipse

Slickster Magazine – Apparently you are a fan of zombie movies. What movie was the soundbite from The Hunt from?

POWERWALKER – I enjoy the odd old-school slashers and zombie horror movies, yes. Really, anything that feels cheesy yet genuine. The soundbites at the start of The Hunt come primarily from George Romero’s 1968 ‘Night of the Living Dead’. There’s a mixture of others in there too, including the ‘groovy’ from Evil Dead 2. That was after four or five other ideas I tried with samples from They Live, Brazil, Godzilla v Mechagodzilla (really) and some random stuff I found online.
Speaking of zombie movies, was World War Z the worst waste of source material ever, or a decent action flick?

I never saw World War Z in movie form, something about the more modern zombie and horror movies feels off to me. I can never take them seriously, just like the older films, but the modern ones spend so much on the production that it doesn’t feel like charming b-rated incompetence. Anyways, as for WWZ, I can’t really say, though I don’t think anyone I know personally has ever recommended it to me.
Did you go to music school or are you primarily self taught?

A mixture of both, I started learning to play guitar by myself when I was 10, then around 14 I started taking lessons from a teacher for both my instrument and music theory. Between then and college I was mostly self-study and practice, then in college I attempted to go through a music major with a focus on composition, though I didn’t complete it due to time and money constraints. After a couple years of relative inactivity, I picked up FL Studio and some VSTs, started listening to synthwave and looking up as much as I could find to learn, and went from there. I think there’s still a very tangible leftover influence from my days of making metal tabs in guitar pro.
Where does your inspiration for your melodies come from? Is there a certain sound you are chasing or do the melodies just kind of pop into your head?

I rarely come up with ideas prior to sitting down in front of my DAW, usually the melodies are built in accordance with the bassline and harmonies/chords, but overall I favor much of the classical-based melody work of European symphonic metal bands like Kalmah. If it sounds over-the-top and fun, I usually love it. In the wake of the last EP and in preparation for upcoming new material I am trying to diversify that a bit by studying other genres and styles, so it remains to be seen what effect that will have.
What exactly is a Cosmic Corpse? A dead body in outer space? That’s actually kind of creepy now that we think about it. Like the famous quote, ‘In space, no one can hear you scream.’

Cosmic Corpse is, in this case, a somewhat esoteric name. I make albums and eps by first coming up with a conceptual event, place, or mood, then name things in accordance with the ideas that spring up from the basis. For example, my first album Strange Depths was a mixture of lovecraftian deep sea horror and my own fear of/fascination with the marine abyss, and all the titles try to reflect those things. In this case, a cosmic corpse is a dead planet or moon, perhaps one that was literally alive (as opposed to covered in lifeforms) in the past, inspired by various Sci-Fi short stories I’ve read. That exact quote nagged me in the back of my head as I added the screaming sound that goes through that whole song.
Well, in following up… If sound waves are unable travel through the vacuum of space, how can someone defend the comment, “Music is the universal language’?

If we start replacing our ears with microwave antennae, I’d imagine it could work. Listening to the sound of Jupiter is always awe inspiring to me. As for a universal language, well, that’s an unpleasant thought when you consider first impressions and what gets to the other thing’s ears first. What if the aliens are pretentious music snobs?

Now that marijuana is being legalized in some states, does getting high help create music or hinder it?

I live in one of those states, Washington, so I think this is the question that many artists here are considering. Personally, I prefer to work in relative sobriety, mostly I drink a cheap beer or two as I sit at my computer. Pot works for some, but for me it either makes it hard to focus, or I focus way too intensely on a specific thing such as the texture of a tone and end up working in circles not getting much done.
Pop quiz – The acronym E.D.M. most nearly means? A) Extremely doable MILF B) Ecstasy, Drinks, and Molly C) Exoskeleton Defense Mechanism D) Excessive donkey manipulation F) Everyone deserves mangoes G) European dandelion manifest H) Exaggerated dick measurement I) Elephants despise magicians

I suppose my vote would be for option F, personally I would like a mango, and I imagine I deserve one, but I don’t claim to know the official pre-requisites for mango allocation. Though, personally, I would say it stands for Efficient Drunk Magnet if my experience helping out at clubs is any indication.

The name of your album is The Neon Eclipse. How did you come up with that title?

The concept underneath the Neon Eclipse was lovecraftian cosmic horror come to Earth, in a sense. The name itself though is a bit of a tongue-in-cheek nod to the rather ubiquitous cyberpunk future theme prevalent in much of darksynth music, wherein even the weather and cosmic events have become neon-colored and chrome-plated. I try to convey the sense that everything is weird in my themes, so that would certainly be a weird event. Really, it’s what I would call a rather light-hearted mixture, the whole EP was a good chunk of fun for me to play around with leftover ideas and new things I had learned after completing Strange Depths, kind of like clearing out the leftover things I still wanted to mess with before starting to work towards the next album.

Thanks for taking the time to talk with Slickster Magazine. Is there anything you’d like to promote or say to your fans?

Thank you for interviewing me! To fans, I would say, thank you for your support, I really am overjoyed that there are people who like my ideas, it’s incredibly motivating. For promotional stuff, look for various new singles, collabs, remixes, and whatnot coming over the next few months, with a new album slated to start in the latter half of the year.