Music of The Sixth Age, Because It's Not The Future Without Synth, Damnit! Options

[Umidori]

Something a little different this time, folks. Typically I'm always busy digging through rules looking for fun and interesting ways to break the system, but today I've got something special. I think you'll enjoy it.

Basically I'd like this thread to be a place for the community to share Shadowrun appropriate music - for use as inspiration, for use as background music during sessions, or even just for use as unbridled entertainment. A place where you can share the best and craziest cyberpunk tunes that get your blood pumping, your mind racing, and your trigger finger twitching.

Without further ado, let's kick this off.

Perturbator

If you've played the most excellent Hotline Miami, you've probably fallen in love with Perturbator already, possibly without even realizing it. And if you haven't played Hotline Miami and have any appreciation whatsoever for heavy driving 80s synth and adrenaline fueled gameplay, GO DO SO IMMEDIATELY.

But on to the music!

Perturbator's been around for a decent while, quietly building up an impressive stock of absolutely wicked music. With three albums at present and rumors of a fourth on the way, it's about damn time people started to tune in. Start with the most recent, I Am The Night. If shivers aren't running down your spine within ten seconds of hitting play, you simply don't love cyberpunk, because the album is positively dripping with it. Evocative of every grimy inner city slum you've ever seen on film or TV, it's a pitch-perfect audio virtualization of copper wire, neon lasers, steaming asphalt, gunmetal and chrome. Jack in, chummers, and let the night consume you.

Uplink OST

Of course, there's more to cyberpunk than just rainslick streets and blood in the gutters. For those of a more cerebral bent, the splendors of the digital world await those with the tech and skills to find them. If you've ever played Uplink, the criminally unknown elite hacking "simulation" game, you've had a taste of what it means to deck with the best, or die trying. And again, if you haven't played it, get cracking!

Unfortunately I don't have any info on the specific artists that pulled together for the Uplink soundtrack, but I do have incredibly fond memories of carefully bouncing and routing my connection through a tangled net of dozens of compromised systems across the entire span of the globe, methodically bypassing a corporate research facility's firewall, sweating nervously as I tried to creep by a SecHack admin, then scrambling to grab the paydata I broke in to nab while alarms are blaring and I'm slowly watching my guard programs tick down the time until I'm traced and toast. If you want to be able to feel the code slipping through your fingers, this is the stuff to listen to.

Skinemax and Memorex

But maybe hacking isn't your thing either. Maybe you just want to sit back and enjoy the future for a change, by basking in the warm, flickering glow of the trideo.

Yesterday's tomorrow promises a brighter future, today! Imagine a world of color and motion, fashion and style, money and power, where the sun is always shining even when the stars come out to play on Sunset Strip until the break of dawn. We know your time is precious and your attention span is trim and sleek, which is why Memorex is there for you, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, fifty two weeks a year, 394.26 years per b'ak'tun. But don't take my word for it! Try it yourself today, and you'll see why Skinemax is the country's number one choice in cinematic dreamscape enlightenment and wellbeing! Come on down! Operators are standing by!

~Umi

[hermit]

Nice tips, but Perturbator (that name!) might stick with us a lot longer if they did their own covers (seems they did this with I am the Night; not so much with Terror 404). Things like that can get bands killed and people bankrupted, wholly unnecessary, and kill good stuff.

[Smirnov]

Perturbator is really nice one, thanks for the tip!

[DamHawke]

@Umidori

Nice recommend on Perturbator, thanks!

[CanRay]

Not-So-Great Ghost Dance

Now, if you excuse me, I want to torch a pot plantation with a flamethrower.

But, before I go, KiddieRun!

[Umidori]

At first I was like... "Wait... what? Wubstep Reggae fusion? Skrillex? Dafuq is this garbage?"

But then I was like... "Oh hey, that's actually a pretty cool video concept. Pity about the soundtrack, though." (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Also, I never thought to compare the Bangarang video to a Shadowrun, but it makes perfect sense. Still, damn shame about the music. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

~Umi

[CanRay]

What Perturbator was talking about in their first track, BTW.

Cyberpunk, older than you'd think.

[Umidori]

To be honest, if corporations really did care about the wellbeing of humanity, rather than merely stuffing the pockets of their directors and CEOs, they could actually be a force for unbelievable good.

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with the concept of a corporation. There is nothing inherently impossible about a corporate utopia. You could use corporations to organize and regulate the world such that all people everywhere were healthy, happy, and fulfilled. But human greed gets in the way. Human cruelty and selfishness and indifference distort the vast potential for good into the nightmarish reality of evil. Slavery, for example, is no more inherently evil than any other form of division of labor. But it is prone to abuse, to monstrous injustices caused by human failings. It gives some power over others, and it lacks oversight to ensure that power is not misused. And corporations are no different.

Throughout history, many cultures have "taxed" the common people by requiring them to perform labor for the state. Each citizen or subject might be required to spend two or three months out of the year laboring on public works, on communal farmland, on regional defense, on roadways or shipping lanes. In Medieval Europe, rather than demanding raw labor, feudal lords instead took a portion of the agricultural products of the people's labor - but the basic underlying concept is still the same. Even today, we pay out a portion of our labor to the government in the form of currency. Rather than physically building roads or growing crops ourselves, we give up some of our currency to the government so they may hire others to do it for us.

And if corporations actually had the best interests of humanity at heart, this would be a fabulous system. Their impressive collective resources and influences could be focused on accomplishing monumental tasks - feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, curing the sick, teaching the uneducated, everything. But instead, time and again, these collective ventures, these nation-like conglomerate entities decide that they'd rather seek out new evils, rather than work toward new good.

~Umi

[ShadowDragon8685]

At first I was like... "Wait... what? Wubstep Reggae fusion? Skrillex? Dafuq is this garbage?"

But then I was like... "Oh hey, that's actually a pretty cool video concept. Pity about the soundtrack, though." (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)
~Umi

I like that song!

[Umidori]

In that case, I'll me explain my position in words you'll understand.

Wub Wub Wub Wub Wub Wub? Wub Wubbity Wub, Wub-Wub, Wub, Wub-Wub, Brngahh, Brngahh, Wub Wubbity! "DROP THE BASS"! WubWub Wub WubWub Wub, Warble Garble, ~ARPEGGIO!~, *Inception Sound Effect*, Wubbity Wubbity Wah-Wah-Wah, Wah-Wah-Wah, Wub.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/silly.gif)

~Umi

[CanRay]

At first I was like... "Wait... what? Wubstep Reggae fusion? Skrillex? Dafuq is this garbage?"

But then I was like... "Oh hey, that's actually a pretty cool video concept. Pity about the soundtrack, though." (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

~Umi

I like that song!

I like that song... As I torch enemies and pot plants while cackling hilariously!!!

...

Far Cry 3, in case you guys are starting to get nervous. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[Umidori]

So I've done some minor digging, it seems that Perturbator is French. This doesn't surprise me in the least.

There's been a whole lot of rather epic music coming from France lately, even if the only ones that are ending up as big names stateside are guys like Justice. Aphasia Records, the label for Perturbator, looks to be chock full of dark, synthy, 80s inspired musical majesty, so if you want more juicy goodness, they're a great place to get your feet wet.

But beyond the European connection, I also highly recommend browsing through the weird side of Youtube. Here are a few good places to start. Just keep following suggested links, see what you find. Some of it will be so-so, some of it will be mind-blowingly amazing, but almost all of it will be bizarre and wonderful.

~Umi

[Mantis]

I always liked Billy Idol's Cyberpunk Album. You can look up the whole thing on your own. Plus just about anything by Nine Inch Nails just seems very cyberpunk to me. The fact it shows up in numerous cyberpunky movies may be a pro or con in your books, depending on the the movie. David Bowie's concept album Outside is interesting as well, especially if you want to run an adventure that is something like the story it tells.
And then there is this.
Usually when I pick music to play during a game it is as much or more for the feeling it evokes and the mood I'm trying to set as for any inherent 'cyberpunkiness' it might have to it. Synth and such is great but you need some other stuff to provide contrast.

[CanRay]

*Sighs* I miss the days when Rock'n'Roll was going to save our souls and the world... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

Damnit, I'm old.

[Mantis]

When was that exactly? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[Umidori]

Nine Inch Nails just seems very cyberpunk to me

Nine Inch Nails just seems very cyberpunk to me

Nine Inch Nails just seems very cyberpunk to me

ಠ_ಠ

~Umi

[Mantis]

What? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Lionhearted]

As if cyberpunk just have a single soundtrack...
Also NIN was good enough for... DOOM(?) it was one of those old shooters, just look at the ammo boxes.

[CanRay]

When was that exactly? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Late-'70s (as Disco died) and the '80s.

Before the dark times... Before, The Empire... Before... THE '90S!

[Lionhearted]

80s Rock did save the world, we just went and fucked it up again (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Umidori]

Disco is NOT dead! Disco is LIFE!

Two words. Electric FUCKING Six.

~Umi

[Udoshi]

Perturbator

Hmn. Thanks for these! I feel I should reciprocate: You should check out Shadow of the Beat and Ugress. Same person under different names, but he has some excellent atmospheric music. Neural Battlefronts, Kyoto street 02 am, Back of a Cab are all pretty nice. So is Armada of Evil Intentions.
His Resound album, while not shadowrun related, is pretty great overall. The spider man rendition always gives me happy jittters since he does funky things so well. Should be enough to check him out.

[Umidori]

Oh wow, that is some stellar stuff.

I absolutely love good atmospheric music that I can use to help set a scene during an active play session. Perturbator is awesome and all, but is definitely more on the "music to listen to while prepping a mission" side of the scale.

~Umi

[CanRay]

Now I wish I had decent speakers.

[Tias]

X-Dream is the bomb. Killer line-driven psytrance with cyberpunk lyrics. I use it for chase and matrix scenes.