That's My Jam 5: "Dangerous Days" by Perturbator

Straight up, I have no recollection of who first mentioned the name Perturbator to me. I could guess it might have been Warren Ellis' newsletter but I cannot really say for sure. But I can say that I absolutely love things cyberpunk.

And man, Perturbator is so cyberpunk.

Perturbator is just one guy, an amazingly talented French individual with the very un-French real name James Kent. He's been working in the synthwave genre of music for the better part of the decade. Synthwave seems like a genre designed for me, with a heavy focus on 80s film and video games as inspiration. But a lot of artists of the field don't click with me.

But when I stumbled upon the album Dangerous Days I was insta-hooked. It has a powerful continued beat through all its songs, like some kind of rave out of a never made Neuromancer film. It's that push to move forward coupled with the rareness of lyrics that helps make it such a great album to play while writing.

Perturbator also has some great album covers.
Dangerous Days is by Ariel Zucker-Brull. 

Once the slow rise of the opening track "Welcome Back" melds into the driving beat of "Perturbator's Theme" my mind is hyper-focused and ready to get rocking on some words. I'm listening to the album right now as I write about it and it has become so ingrained in my creative process that I just want to go back to the latest Shockwave story.

The entire album is available to listen to on Bandcamp. Perturbator even has a pay-what-you-want model set up for downloads. I'm pretty sure I actually downloaded the album for free many moons ago, but I've certainly given Mister Kent my money with every subsequent Perturbator album he's released. Or you can just listen to on this handy Spotify list...


So it's a win-win to go give this album a chance. If you like eighties movies, synth music or just a driving beat, I doubt you will be disappointed.