ON THE RISE
If you want to go from a 1980s video arcade to a dystopian world of 2088 with a pit stop in 2025, you can get there by riding Arcade Knights’ authentic ’80s synths on “Neon Dreamers” and the album it ends, Cyber Hack.
And you can do all that while you read the graphic novel of the same name (Cyber Hack: Uprising), for which the album is the soundtrack, because everything he does tells a story.
The video will take you right into dystopia.
“I have, with that full album, Cyber Hack, including ‘Neon Dreamers,’ a graphic novel that I wrote,” said Arcade Knights. “There’s also lyrics in the Cyber Hack and ‘Neon Dreamers’ tracks, that helps tell a relavent story, it’s all linear. From the first track to the 11th track, there's a full story that unfolds.”
Musically, the story is narrated through 1980s hardware sounds. He emphasizes hardware, not computers.
“Yes, I’m an 80s kid, and what I’ve done with Arcade Knights is I use ’80s synthesizers, authentic synths, authentic sounds, all in hardware. I don’t use a DAW. I use the hardware. So, with Cyber Hack, it’s an old school feel with a modern twist, because what I also add to the music, aside from the authentic ’80s synths, is modern glitch sounds, cyberpunk elements.”
The hook in “Neon Dreamers” conveys the feel of the music and a hint of the story of the album and the novel, and Arcade Knights’ approach to music:
We’re neon dreamers lighting up the sky
Chasing our tomorrow, never asking why
With our hearts electric breaking through the dark
In this digital world we’ll make our mark
He is making his mark in a digital era with, as previously noted, ’80s hardware. He started putting out music in January 2024, the month, he says, that he left computers behind to make music. He tried the digital audio workstations.
“I wasn’t able to really get my feelings through the mouse and into the interface. And then I said, ‘I’m done with this,’ and I went back to hardware synthesizers, hardware sequencers, hardware groove boxes with authentic ’80s sounds and the tactile feel of me hitting pads and turning knobs to get the synthesizer frequency pattern just right.”
His day job is as an ethical hacker — he hacks the systems of critical infrastructure to find any weaknesses so they can be eliminated before bad guys can exploit them.
“I protect power grids, oil rigs, the big, heavy kind of industry.”
In fact, some of the tracks on Cyber Hack include industrial sounds glitches from his work. For instance, one of them is wrapped like an industrial power transformer.
“I changed the pitch and worked the sound, so it’s my sound.”
The story in Cyber Hack is based on the potential threat of AI.
“The story has this battle of an evil AI with a retro ’80s hacker group that is defending our freedom today. That’s the idea behind the album and the music, and every track, every key signature I use is related to a feeling I want to invoke through this journey, this album. So, from start to finish, there’s this kind of up-and-down conflict. There’s a heavy, rebellious anthem, and then there’s a resolve at the end.”
“Neon Dreamers” is the final song of the album, and he says that through it you can get an idea of where the story goes.
Everything he does has a story, and every album has or will have a graphic novel to go with it. The novel for an album he released last year, Dark Fate, will be out this October, on the anniversary of the album’s release. Cyber Hack, the novel and the album, are on Amazon.
Everything he does is on retro-based equipment. He wants to bring that sound, that feel of the ’80s arcades, into the present and adapt the modern world to it. He also does his own mixing, mastering and engineering—everything from start to finish, in hardware.
And vice versa.
“I’m creating synthwave-cyberpunk music. I’m expanding it back to the past into a retro arcade feel, but really still having the true dystopian future aspect, like Blade Runner, which is cyberpunk.”
The name of his band, Arcade Knights, comes from the feel of that era, when he was a kid. He cites the soundtracks from Miami Vice, Rambo, Terminator, Tron, and arcade halls, “all those flavors.”
He is trying something new, with his albums doing double duty as albums — wonderful electronic listening — and as soundtracks for his graphic novel. A great deal of the charm and, for him, the passion, is doing it on ’80s hardware, with ’80s sounds brought into the 21st century.
“I really want to make this a full-time thing, so I’m really putting my heart into it. And dude, it feels awesome! Nostalgia meets modern neon and cyberpunk.”
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ON THE RISE
Blossoms caught up with NME to discuss competing with The Beatles and Johnny Marr for this week’s Number One album. With ‘Songs From The Wedding Cake’ in the running, the band also explained why making things themselves remains such an important part of their work as AI becomes more common.
The Stockport group put out their sixth album last Friday, October 2. By the midweek update, it was sitting at Number Two, between The Beatles’ expanded edition of ‘Rubber Soul’ and Johnny Marr’s latest solo album, ‘The Age Of Everything’.
“It’s mad, to be honest,” singer Tom Ogden said to NME about the chart race. “Liverpool on one side, Manchester on the other and Stockport in the middle. If you’d told us this 10 years ago, when we were releasing our debut, I wouldn’t have believed you. But I mean, we’re in good company aren’t we?”
Discussing the stories behind the album, Ogden described ‘Songs From The Wedding Cake’ as “about being married and all the everyday stuff that comes with it”. He married Katie Donovan, the sister of Blossoms drummer Joe, in 2021. Married life has since given him a new appreciation for what he describes as “the extraordinary ordinary”.
“Saying the wrong thing in an argument, losing your wife’s no claims bonus, crying at the Kardashians, it’s all in there,” he explained. “The album is named after Stockport Town Hall, which everyone round where we live calls the Wedding Cake, and it’s where I got married, so it couldn’t be much closer to home.
“The last album [‘Gary’, 2024] had a song about a stolen fibreglass gorilla, which everyone loved, and that gave us the confidence to bring the same playfulness to this one, just with more personal subject matter this time.”
Alongside tracks that came out of writing sessions with Declan McKenna in a hot tub, the album reflects the band’s desire to stay involved in every part of the creative process.
“It started with the recording,” Ogden explained. “We made the album with Shawn Lee, playing live straight to tape, and once you’ve done it that way you can’t really go and fake everything else. We sat down as a band and picked the colour palette, and everything visual followed from that. We had body scans taken of ourselves and cake toppers of the five of us 3D printed, put them on a real cake and photographed it. I’ve directed and edited the videos, and the sets are all built by hand, no green screen. For the pop-up shop on launch weekend, a local artist hand-painted the album cover for the sign outside.
“It’s more work, but you end up with a world that’s yours, and I think people can tell when a band’s had its hands on everything.”
With AI tools and digital effects becoming increasingly widespread, that approach feels particularly relevant. For Blossoms, though, the motivation is simple: “the fun is in the making”.
“Tape doesn’t let you cheat and neither does a real cake,” Ogden said. “If a set’s a bit wonky, it’s because one of us or our mates built it. I think the more stuff gets generated, the more people want to know a human being actually did it. We’ve been in this band together for over 10 years, five lads from Stockport, and that isn’t something you can ‘prompt’.”
Maya Jama also appeared in the video for the album’s first single, ‘Meet Me In Love’. Her appearance came shortly before the UK launch of Celebrity Traitors, where she took on the role of a traitor alongside a cast that included Richard E Grant and James Acaster.
“She was brilliant,” Ogden recalled of working with Jama. “We’d met her at the MTV EMAs in Manchester a couple of years ago, so we took a chance and sent her a DM …and she said yes. Next thing she’s in a theatre in Cheadle miming my vocals while a load of people dressed as me serenade her. She got the idea straight away and was a proper laugh about it.”
The conversation then turned to whether he thought Jama could take home the win on Celebrity Traitors.
Ogden joked: “As for Traitors, she spent a whole day pretending to sing my song and I almost believed her, so I’d say she’s got every chance.”
Fans can listen to ‘Songs From The Wedding Cake’ now. In November, Blossoms head out on a UK arena tour with The Royston Club. Tickets and further details are available here.
Before the tour begins, the group is also scheduled to appear on SNL UK on Saturday, October 24.
