Tag: Nicolas Winding Refn

DJ Tower aka Tim Alexander has been a fixture in the Denver music scene since the 90s. With early gigs and residencies in the Goth scene, Alexander has gone on to be one of the resident DJs with Lipgloss, the nation’s longest-running indie dance night run by founder Michael Trundle. As a teenage fan of heavy metal and synthesizer music it seems inevitable that Alexander would become fascinated with the nascent synthwave movement that emerged in the mid-to-late 2000s in France and Western Europe. The fusion of analog synth composition and bombastic rock guitar was also inspired by 1980s film soundtracks in the realm of action, science fiction and horror where artists like John Carpenter, Vangelis, Jan Hammer, Tangerine Dream, Jean-Michel Jarre and Giorgio Moroder reigned supreme. Modern synthwave perhaps came to prominence outside of niche musical circles when Kavinsky’s song “Nightcall” appeared on the soundtrack to Nicolas Winding-Refn’s 2011 action noir film Drive starring Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan. It cemented in many people’s minds the American past time of night drives and their attendant sense of romance and freedom. The track made its way onto Kavinsky’s 2013 classic album OutRun, a title that became a term closely affiliated with the genre. Alexander himself borrowed the name for his monthly synthwave night Outrun which has been a regular event every first Saturdays for nearly a decade.

Alexander also tried his hand at making synthwave music of his own as a member of the musical trio TetraKroma for a handful of years but has gone back to focusing on his ability to explore the art form and other styles of music and share his passion for the music with others via his DJ gigs. In 2023 Alexander lanched his inaugural synthwave festival Synthbanger’s Ball (a clear nod to MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball program) to be held Saturday, September 2, 2023 at The Oriental Theater in Denver, Colorado with Los Angeles-based headliner Droid Bishop as well as local synthwave stars Elayarson, Star Farer, Patternshift, Jacket, Bob Sync with between music pre-recorded music sets from DJs Tower, Jay, Eric and Niq V. In this interview we dive deep into Alexander’s roots in music, his entry into the world of being a regular DJ and how his fascination with synthwave came to be as a youth in the 80s when epic, popular heavy metal and synthesizer music were developing into the forms that would directly influence synthwave as well as the modern form and how it has evolved and continues to grow and thrive.

Listen to our interview with DJ Tower on Bandcamp. For more information on Outrun please visit the Facebook page. To buy tickets to the inaugural Synthbanger’s Ball please visit the site for The Oriental Theater here.