Out of one of Austin’s best labels, the heavy and heady Holodeck Recs, comes a badass new music video from Flatliner for their 80s by way of the future track “Blasted Highway.” This is retrofuture shit done hard and right and right hard, a bit like a darker Mylo, a bit Vitalic (which is, I suppose, like a better, darker French Mylo anyways).
Flatliner reference the unabashed futurelove of the 70s and 80s scifi thing with the look of this video, such as having lots of purples and pinks and weird abstract close-up faceshots, but totally embrace it without a sense of irony, because honestly the way that era did scifi and future shit was just fucking cool. That sentiment really extends to the whole song and the group itself, who make this bloopy hardcore electronic synthy shit that’s all 80s done from a modern sensibility and whose tracks basically ask you to get into it or get gone.
We’re into it at The Deli, always are when this kind of fearsome, ballsy future shit is done right, especially when it nails going retro (hard to do). There was something truly perfect about that 80s scifi aesthetic, with its purples on blacks, its straight-lined cars, its heroes with sunglasses and big hair and wife beaters under open shirts, and in turn, there’s something pretty perfect about what Flatliner have done here. Pressing play is akin to throwing your head back and gargling a torrential downpour of lazer beams, but like, through your eyes and ears, and if that sounds to you like as good a way to spend five minutes as it does to us, you need this in your headspace and quick. Get on it below.