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
M.O.T.H.E.R. – the new collaborative band helmed by Robbie Furze of The Big Pink and currently featuring Jamie T and Jamie Hince of The Kills – have given their first proper interview, talking to NME about the emotional origins of the project, their aim to be “the guitar version of N.E.R.D.”, and their hit-list of future collaborators.
Revealing the new project at the end of May alongside the blistering anthemics of debut single ‘My Love’, Furze shared that the seeds of M.O.T.H.E.R. had come from losing his own parent after a prolonged illness. “My mum got sick about five years ago and was ill for about four years before she died,” he told NME.
“In that period I had a daughter, which was this real juxtaposition of death and birth. My mates – Jamie T and Jamie Hince – came together for me, and then sadly Jamie [Hince] lost his dad too,” Furze went on, sitting in a West London pub alongside Hince.
Hince continued: “I lost my dad four days after Robbie [lost his mum], and it felt like, if ever there was a calling, it was that. But it didn’t all come out of that doom and gloom. I hate mentioning COVID but everyone had so much time on their hands and there was this open creativity back then. I was working on music with Jamie T, sending each other stuff, and the idea for the three of us to do something together came out of that. It felt nice, like we were buying into this camaraderie, and this gang.”
The three musicians have previous credits together, with the two Jamies also writing on The Big Pink’s most recent album, 2022’s ‘The Love That’s Ours’. Fully collaborating on M.O.T.H.E.R., Furze joked, was like “the clash of three egos”. “Everyone wants to work with each other because you like what each other does, and so it’s not quite imposter syndrome but you have to live up to [that idea] and jump in and be a character,” Hince continued. “You can’t be too humble about it.”
Recording between Hince’s studio in LA and Furze’s studio in London’s Bethnal Green, the current trio have also dropped their self-titled debut EP featuring three further tracks: ‘Real Human’, ‘Traitor’, and ‘Surrender’. The ethos of the band, meanwhile, is for the line-up to shift with each release, bringing in familiar faces from other groups and working with whoever might be available at the time.
“We did a little bit [of recording] with Jenny [Lee Lindberg, bassist] from Warpaint who I love; I really want to get something solid down with her,” revealed Hince, while Furze suggested that names including Zach Hill of industrial hip-hop trio Death Grips, and electronic producer Skream have all been in the mix for future iterations of the band.
“We ran into Zach and he seemed into it but then he started ghosting me,” he noted. “Whether or not he decides to text me back, it would be wonderful to have that kind of thing. Jamie Hince, Skream, Rhys Webb from The Horrors [who played on their recent radio session], and Zach – if I saw that, I’d wanna hear what that nonsense sounds like!”
Check out the rest of the interview with Furze and Hince below, as they discuss their endearing bromance, their admiration for Jamie T, and why the band are unlikely to ever make an album.
NME: Hello Robbie and Jamie! You must have been kicking about at a lot of ‘00s parties, how far does your friendship go back?
Robbie Furze: “Me and Jamie T started becoming friends on the circuit of festivals when the first Big Pink record came out in 2009. Then me and Jamie Hince met at Corona Capital in Mexico in 2012.”
Jamie Hince: “He had a reputation – I think we all had reputations… I remember his wife giving me these dried insect snacks and I didn’t eat them because I thought he might have laced them with something…”
Furze: “Every band playing Corona Capital was staying in this massive hotel, so it was just chaos.”
Hince: “It was at the height of ego. Everyone had bodyguards. Bands were trying to outdo other bands. Like, The Black Keys – you’re two guys from Ohio, you don’t need armed bodyguards…”
Where does Jamie T fit into all this?
Hince: “Our orbits crossed quite a bit. I remember seeing him at some tiny little pub when he was probably about 19, and I love how it’s come full circle. My heart sinks a little bit when I see Jamie T working because I know I’m nowhere near [as good as] that. I have to chip away at things and stand back and then dive in again to get the feeling, whereas he’s just got the feeling from the start.”
Furze: “He’s pretty incredible. The song ‘Traitor’ on the EP was supposed to be for my vocal, and he was almost getting pissed off that we couldn’t get the verses right. He was just like, ‘I’ll sort it out’, goes up to the mic, does one take and it’s done. See you later. He’s that kind of guy.”
Do you have to leave your ego at the door in those situations?
Hince: “I did this amazing beat for ‘Traitor’ that I loved, and I sent it to Jamie T and got back a text saying: ‘One pound fish’. Fuck! I mean talk about leaving your ego at the door… I know what he was saying, he thought it was a bit ‘cor blimey’ waltz. But some of the shit he ends up doing, it’s totally ‘cor blimey one pound fish’!”
Furze: “But whatever works for the track works, and everyone has to be happy with it. You push each other without really knowing it.”
How did you envision the project?
Hince: “These things just come together. It sounds cheesy, but I wanted it to be the guitar version of N.E.R.D. – a production team of people that love each other.”
Furze: “We’ve got songs in the pipeline with other artists already, and it makes it like an N.E.R.D. or Unkle or Massive Attack thing. Being collaborative makes me more excited.”
Hince: “It feels like that time has gone where albums really last. Records seem to come and go quite quickly now. So I’ve shifted my enthusiasm because I think the attention span has gone. You spend so much time making records and so little time getting any reward.”
Furze: “I’d like to do standalone singles, or another EP of four or five tracks as a batch. I wouldn’t wanna go further than that.”
None of your individual bands and projects sound that alike – where do you think your tastes align?
Hince: “There’s something unspoken that we all seem to agree on which is this epic-ness. There’s a line in one of the songs that talks about ‘the last of the hooligans‘ and that seemed to be the feeling behind it all. If there’s a similarity with what everyone wanted, it was maybe just being a bit romantic and epic.”
Why do you think you were drawn to that?
Hince: “I don’t know, maybe we’re just lonely men?”
Furze: “Beaten down but being pulled up by hope…”
Hince: “We’ve all been bashing around, making all this noise and spending so much time doing it; I think it gives you that feeling. There’s something tiny and irrelevant about what you do but something life and death about what you do too, and I think the cocktail of that makes it… well, the last of the hooligans.”
Tell us a bit about ‘My Love’ – the first proper single.
Furze: “It’s one of the most basic songs. It’s a love song about hope, but it just has such an incredible energy to it with its simplicity. I’m not a massive Beatles fan but it has this relatable energy [like their early music]. ‘I wanna hold your hand’ – you don’t get more basic than that, in a great way. I think simplicity is power. Sometimes less is more, and if you mean it you can get away with it.”
Are there going to be live shows?
Furze: “Definitely. We’re playing a bit of catch up because we didn’t think ‘My Love’ would get the reaction it has, but we’re desperate to get out and do gigs.”
Hince: “In the spirit of the collaborative project, I’m really liking the idea of having different people in different countries playing with us; having a different vibe each time.”
Furze: “It would be really exciting to see different characters that you know from different bands. For the radio session [with Steve Lamacq on BBC 6 Music] we had Rhys Webb from The Horrors on bass, and I love that idea.”
You’re obviously very close – what are your favourite memories of this charming bromance?
Furze: “Jamie’s probably my best friend in the world and we’ve been through a lot together. In 2015 we both uprooted and went out to LA together, I went out there for about five years and he stayed, so we were pretty inseparable. It got to a point where it was breakfast, lunch and dinner together.”
Hince: “We just became one person. People would confuse us even though we don’t look the same. He had an ex-girlfriend who he went to say hello to and she said, ‘Hello Jamie’. We just started having the same vibe. The same embarrassing energy. We’ve chilled out a bit recently but when I was in LA and Robbie was in London we’d speak to each other for four hours a day. I was getting complaints from his wife.”
The ‘M.O.T.H.E.R. EP’ is out now.
The Big Pink returned with their third studio album, ‘The Love That’s Ours’, in 2022. It marked their first full-length effort in over 10 years. T and Hince worked on that LP, too, co-writing the single ‘Love Spins On Its Axis’.
The Kills released their sixth and latest record, ‘God Games’, in 2023.
Jamie T, meanwhile, made a comeback with ‘The Theory Of Whatever’ the previous year. He recently joined forces with Fred Again.. on the track ‘Lights Burn Dimmer’, and performed with The Maccabees at their big London reunion gig last summer.
