Sovietwave

Sovietwave is a microgenre of synthwave that emerged online in the early 2010s, mostly in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, filtering post-punk and electronic music through nostalgia for the late Soviet Union. Its sound — drum machines, analogue synthesisers, minor-key basslines and deadpan Russian-language vocals — quotes both Western cold wave and the actual Soviet synth-pop and rock of the 1980s, *Kino* above all. Visually it trades in brutalist housing blocks, space-programme imagery and VHS decay; its flagship act, *Molchat Doma* of Minsk, carried the style from Bandcamp compilations to global viral success at the decade's end.