There’s a huge leap in time between Jan Hammer’s mid-’80s Miami Vice heyday and Kavinsky’s 2011 Drive soundtrack kickoff, “Nightcall“. Now, you could easily classify both under the”synthwave” umbrella and leave it at that, but after ingesting now-beloved pieces of media like Far Cry: Blood Dragon and Kung Fury, we’ve come to label that retro-futuristic fetishism and nostalgia for pre-internet MIDI/VHS artistic limitations (e.g. modern acts like Kavinsky) as “vaporwave”. Luckily, as the birthplace of Don Johnson’s daughter Dakota, that Vice-descended vapor has kept Austin synth-enthusiasts dewy, which is pretty damn nice.
In particular, four-piece Dream 2 Dream surfs a vaporwave aesthetic across coasts of indie, psych, and alternative; down to how they stylize their name and craft their pseudo-neon artwork, D2D deliberately pushes elements of late Cold War pop culture into their decades-crossed bops and iconography. And like a custom-tuned Testarossa of well-balanced talent, Dream 2 Dream revs off later this month on a West Coast tour.
But before they do, today Dream 2 Dream drops off their first of several singles for 2023, “I Have Hope”. Although it stays under a certain BPM speed limit, “I Have Hope” cruises through the night with massive drums, cinematic chord changes, impassioned vocals, crunchy bass, arpeggiated melodies, and a ton of reverb and delay across the board. Altogether “I Have Hope” maintains the solitary getaway driver mood whether you’re on the way to case a bank or just joyriding with your favorite “partners in crime”.
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