G33KEDOUT Synth #1 – Mind.In.A.Box

Did you know that the crossover between electronic music and video games is pretty darn pervasive?

DJ’s, festivals and electronic music are often either plugged-in or directly inspired by the gaming and g33k culture industry which isn’t so surprising if you’re used to having a video game controller in your hands. But do you know who you’re listening to while you game? Folks like Daft Punk, Haujobb, Xorcist, Aphex Twin, Alien Hand, Massive Attack and others have all dabbled in the gaming soundtrack or g33k pop-culture realm.

For the first instalment of G33KEDOUT SYNTH we listen to Austrian futurepop icons, Mind.In.A.Box, who can be heard in tracks on the XBOX360 racing series, Project Gotham, among others.

So who is the band behind the game?  M.I.A.B Lead man and reputed perfectionist, Stefan Poiss and partner Markus Hadwiger met as kids, then moved on to creating video games before turning their natural attention for creative genius to music.  From the start the group had a vision to yarn an epic tale.  Debuting on their fist album, ‘Lost Alone’ in 2004, the “Mr. Black” story began.  Over the course of the next two albums, ‘Dreamweb’ and ‘Crossroads’, M.I.A.B chronicled an amazing and continuing storyline based on the shadowy character of Mr. Black which can only be described as a cyberpunk opera within the lyrical narrative of the band’s songs. For those that have followed the story, it’s become a bit of an epic journey, sort of like a musical comic book, steeped in a Blade-Runnersque film noir atmosphere that can be extracted via careful, repeated listening and lyrical analysis.

In 2010 the band broke from the cyberpunk storyline to launch the much-acclaimed album R.E.T.R.O.  This album was a wholistic nod to the bands direct connection with the video game industry as a sort of tribute to the heady days of 8-bit computing, complete with game soundtrack remixes and creative use of chip-tune themes.

Recently the band has picked-up the ‘Black’ story again with their latest 2012 release of ‘Revelations’ and you can preview it on M.I.A.B’s website here.  The site is a game-like experience in itself including the bands discography and tracks used in the Project Gotham series among others.