GUNSHIP, are back with a new video for “Art3mis & Parzival”, a tribute to the book Gunship ‘Ready Player One’. The song focuses on the source material’s romantic heart – the love story between the books two main characters Art3mis & Parzival.

Gunship on the single:

“The core of Ready Player One – it’s spirit – i.e. the power of imagination, the lack of cynicism and the notion that one person can make a difference. If you melted this stuff down and mixed it up with the optimistic future-gazing promise of the 1980s, you will have brewed up the fuel that burns in the heart of GUNSHIP. It’s a fantastic book, a helpful reminder to stay in touch with your childhood – we wrote this tribute for Ernest Cline. To quote Wes Anderson’s Mr. Henry character “The world… needs dreamers” and in the current climate, now more than ever”.

The video for “Art3mis & Parzival” was directed by the artist Genuine Human (Jason Tammemagi) and can be seen here. It was painstakingly created with pixel art techniques employed to pay homage to genuine 80’s video game graphics from classic gaming systems – Atari 2600 and Commodore 64 through to the later Nintendo and Sega Megadrive machines. The graphics are designed to evoke the experience of using those consoles in the era they were created. True to the spirit of the book, the video also references over 80 classic geeky games, movies, TV shows or albums.

Genuine Human (Jason Tammemagi) on the video:

“I wanted to capture the romance, the dreamy quality of the track. It’s a song you can get lost in, immerse yourself in, until it lifts you up with the epic chorus and fills you with optimism and energy. It comes from a place of nostalgia but becomes something entirely new.

It is a celebration of old and new, the VR future we all dreamed of back in 1984. It’s set in 2044 but it’s really the 2018 that our childhood selves thought we would be living in. It is a homage to our favorite classic games and classic movies and the book itself, all wrapped around a shared connection between two people separated over distance and yet united in a virtual world.”

Created by Dan Haigh, Alex Westaway and Alex Gingell, GUNSHIP is an evolution of the synthwave genre, which was originally started by Rosso Corsa records & The Valerie Collective artists. The synthwave scene is ever expanding, pushed forward by the popularity of movies like ‘Drive’, ‘The Guest’, ‘Kung Fury’ and more recently ‘Stranger Things’; however the majority of synthwave music continues to be instrumental. GUNSHIP focuses on creating vividly atmospheric and cinematic music in this style but ultimately concentrates on ensuring that the music serves the vocal performances in the songs.

“GUNSHIP is a neon soaked, late night, sonic getaway drive, dripping with luscious analogue synthesizers, cinematic vocals and cyberpunk values, exploding from the front cover of a dusty plastic VHS case which has lain forgotten since 1984.” – Dan Haigh

GUNSHIP’s sound is created with vintage analogue synthesizers and other retro electronic gear available in the 1980s. The music is driven by retro gear, inspired by nostalgia for a bygone era but GUNSHIP use this approach to yield something fresh and new. GUNSHIP is sonically diverse – blending sweeping fluorescent synth lines with fever pitched and adrenalizing electric bass arpeggios. This musical foundation, sometimes dark and brooding, sometimes romantic, underpins emotive and cinematic vocals.