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.”
Ride into the past, the future and the present and connect to Arcade Knights on all platforms for new music, videos, and social posts.
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ON THE RISE
As Belle & Sebastian share their buoyant 2026 Scotland World Cup anthem ‘It Only Takes One Lion’, frontman Stuart Murdoch has spoken to NME about capturing the feeling back home and his hopes for the team since childhood.
Released today (Tuesday June 2), the Scottish indie heroes’ bid for their nation’s tournament anthem was written after the team’s surprise 4-2 qualifying win against Denmark.
“I felt like we were watching history in the moment, like the hand of God from the old National Lottery adverts was pointing at us,” Murdoch told NME about that game-changing victory. “It was meant to be. Scotland aren’t a terrific team and Denmark are better, but it just felt that day that Scotland were destined to win. Three out of the four goals were things of beauty.”
Produced by and co-written with Pete Ferguson and premiered at the band’s recent London Royal Albert Hall show as part of the anniversary tour for their classic first two albums ‘Tigermilk’ and ‘If You’re Feeling Sinister’, the soaring song is intrinsically Belle & Sebastian as it morphs from a hymn to a an orchestral disco jam as Murdoch sings of a nation’s hopes and his own boyhood dreams.
NME spoke to Murdoch from the band’s North American tour, where we found him in a graveyard in Texas. “I was just looking for a park because Austin is a pretty scary place downtown now, so I’ve ended up in the Texas Cemetery,” he shared via Zoom.
Was there anyone famous buried there?
“I was looking around and I found the founder of Austin City Limits, which is pretty cool as that’s where we’re playing tonight. I’m looking at one now and it just says, ‘Martin: he loved the law’. Then underneath it says, ‘Billie Louise: she loved the lawyer’.”
We joke that there’s the opening to a Belle & Sebastian song if there ever there was one. “It’s great! It’s given me inspiration.”
For now, read the rest of interview with Murdoch below as he tells us about Scotland’s chances, 30 years of hurt, if fans will be singing it at the top of their lungs in Canada, the US and Mexico this summer, and what’s next for the band.
NME: Hello Stuart. Here we are with ‘It Only Takes One Lion’ Who needs three?
Stuart Murdoch: “Who needs three? Good question. I wouldn’t know!”
What’s the mood been like in Scotland since you qualified?
“It’s funny. I’ve noticed this everywhere: with the World Cup there’s a mixture of cynicism and anticipation. When the actual tournament starts, everyone will get excited about it. Because of FIFA, the peace prize, the ticket prices, people seem quite down about it. I found that in Mexico. They were quite fed up with the general hype about it. I’m in the States just now and you shouldn’t believe all the hype: people are people. The States are just as ‘great’ as ever. We love coming here, we love the cities. The general sense of North American optimism will make for a good tournament.”
“With Scotland though, people will definitely be excited about it. You have to understand, it’s been 30 years since Scotland qualified so I think everybody and their dog has written a song for the team.”
How do you meet the challenge of penning a World Cup anthem, when there have been so many legendary bangers and absolutely shite duds?
“I never planned it. I woke up with a tune in my head and a feeling. That’s the way it should always be for songs. I couldn’t control myself and it was quite straight-forward. I wrote this initial bit about how I felt about the current World Cup team and the qualifying game. It was more introspective.
“When it starts off with, ‘The days are dark and long…’, it’s just my general feeling about football. I’ve been going to see my own team quite a lot recently. It’s my little anthem for how I feel about football and following Scotland for the last 50 years, just the ups and downs. It’s quite a heartfelt thing. When I was eight or nine, the Scottish team meant so much to me, it the thing I was most invested in. There’s a line in there about how I used to memorise the whole squad before ‘78 and 82.”
Tell us about lyric: “This is Scotland, where everyone knows you start with nothing… where you can join an army for peace”…
“My wife made the video for it and she said, ‘I’m not sure I like that line about everyone starting with nothing’. Our first game is against Haiti and they really have nothing. Their country is pretty poor and they’re going through hard times. It was almost a throwaway line and I’m not sure what I meant by it, but in a footballing sense every game starts with nothing. Even if it’s against Brazil, you’ve always got a chance!
“The army refers to The Tartan Army, which has really been quite a remarkable institution for the past 30 years. We changed from drunken buffoons that used to wreck things to this excellent supporting brigade.”
It’s not your standard football sing-along. Can you see it being sung in the terraces?
“I’m not sure, I didn’t cynically design it for that. Many people have said to me in the past, ‘None of your songs have a chorus, you need to write one’. ‘This is Scotland’ is a chorus! They things need to happen organically. I’m sure the fans will still be singing ‘Yes sir, I can boogie’ for years to come.”
What do you actually think of Scotland’s chances right now?
“With the last Euros, they maybe got stage fright or didn’t have that tournament experience. I think Andy Robertson [captain] will be telling them, ‘We really need to produce our best stuff’. If they do and we see them actually playing football, then I don’t really care about the results that much. I just want to see Scotland exceeding our expectations of them. That Denmark game was so crazy that everything after just feels like a bonus.”
If miracles do happen and Scotland make it to the final, how will you celebrate? A free gig in Glasgow?
“Of course, yes! Free everything. If we even got close, I think the whole country would shut down for a year and the GDP would drop. We’d go into a massive recession but no one would care.
“We were playing a gig in Mexico City and I told the crowd, ‘It’s you and us, Mexico and Scotland in the final’. Mexico have never really got close either. I told them it would be five goals a piece, even after everyone takes a penalty and we have to share the trophy. I would settle for that.”
You released two albums in quick succession with 2022’s ‘A Bit of Previous’, 2023’s ‘Late Developers’ and then your debut novel Nobody’s Empire in 2024. You’ve been busy! Is there any progress on new material?
“We went through a period where we recorded a lot and we said, ‘Let’s not record for a while and give ourselves a couple of cycles off’. We’re doing these 30th anniversary shows so we’re just going to lean on the back catalogue and cruise for a while. We’re doing a year on and a year off so everyone can focus on different things.
We’re not looking at new Belles stuff for a while. I’m meant to be developing Nobody’s Empire into a film, so that’s my next task. It’s a long way off from being made but I’m going to write the script for that.”
Scotland’s first World Cup tournament match is against Haiti on Sunday June 14, before they go on to play Morocco on Friday June 19 and Brazil on Wednesday June 24.
The band’s ‘Tigermilk’ and ‘If You’re Feeling Sinister’ anniversary tour continues throughout the summer, performing the iconic albums in full during across the UK, Europe, North America, Mexico, Australia, Singapore and Japan. Visit here for tickets and more information.
