Kind of depends on what kind of music you are into

I don't believe I've picked up on that sentiment myself.

I for one prefer actual shitty 80's music, although I like some of this retrowave stuff too.

I suppose we need to submit some Gary Numan and Ultravox and see what happens.

The difference is: in the 80's they weren't doing it ironically, and NOW THEY ARE!!

I'm not really into Lazerhawk, but I like the video. But what's ironic about it? Irony would be like doing or listening to something because you think it's silly, but all this music is very heartfelt. It's like saying Godspeed You Black Emperor is being ironic because it was doing what Shostakovich and Holst did decades earlier.

(or punk bands that try to capture 80s punk rock aesthetics..)

A lot of these groups and composers have their influences and not just from the 1980s, but just because an artist has certain influences doesn't mean they're just being "ironic" or churning out a pastiche.

From a purely technical perspective, the IDM boys took electronic music as far as it could be taken in the '90s. I can understand why people started dialing it back in the '00s, the end result being chiptune and this kind of stuff. Even Aphex dialed it back with the Analord albums. If you don't impose limitations on yourself, you'll end up downloading VSTs all day or piddling around in audio programming environments like Reaktor and Max rather than making music. If those limitations involve using LinnDrums and DX7s rather than DAWs and plugins, more power to you.

I don't agree with you IZ, but if you're right, making this unironically bothers me more.

The videos that go with this sub-genre is always a late 70's to 80's jerkoff fest, so there's no way I see it as straight-ahead.

Also it's musically un-fucking-bearable.

Yeah, I agree about the videos, and the album artwork. It's always some "Lisa Frank was swallowed by a Genesis Cartridge" type shit. I was excited by that Gunship video (and song) because it didn't do that, but their album cover and other videos are pretty lame, including one that's literally a GTA V movie dubbed "Official Video." But I still like the music. I grew up and lived in the middle of the grunge era so flashy disco-y music is fun for me; ironically two other bands from my city, Glass Candy and The Litanic Mask also went from punk to Italian Disco, which isn't too dissimilar so maybe it's a climate thing.

But I wish there were more bands that would break the mold like Arcade Fire, which started out intentionally steampunk in the attire and are now just like whatever, even though their music still sounds the same.