We recently connected with Matt Moore and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Matt thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

The driver behind SUB NEON has always been to step away from the bright lights and blind nostalgia of the synthwave genre, and this project has never felt more relevant for me than right now.

This project has always been about the darkness that exists behind the neon glow. You cannot turn on the TV or scroll through social media today without seeing an awful lot of darkness that exists in the world.

There are big changes that are spreading across the world. Some of them existential. AI has so much potential but it is being ushered in by the morally bankrupt. That moral bankruptcy is becoming more prominent in different countries and societies.

That’s why I put together Nightbreed. It’s a dark. guitar-fuelled cybernetic love letter to humanity and it is also a call to everyone that we can design the future that we want; if, we can recognise just how powerful as a species we are.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m a synthwave and darksynth inspired music producer, vocalist & guitarist with a passion for dark synths and bright choruses. I’ve always been a passionate musician but I took a break for a long time to focus on my career. Then I decided to start producing electronic music during COVID and I really found my passion again. Then I got signed to Retrosynth Records and I have a small but really amazing an loyal following. And I played my first live set at a festival in the UK last year! It’s been a trip and I love what I’m doing right now.

In terms of style, I love synthwave as a genre, but I wanted to tread a new path. SUB NEON is all about fusion; the fusion of reality with nostalgia. It’s about what happens in the shadows of the neon glow.

It is a dark and brooding project, with flourishes of hope and major chord-shaped stuff. I use synthwave elements , but also bass that would be more at home in dubstep. But the style is not archetypal synthwave, and that’s the way I like it!

My drums are intended to sound as ‘live’ as possible and I use sounds and structures from a broad array of genres.

I feel like I have created a style that is definitely my own. I collaborate with a several musicians across the globe and they all say I’ve got my own sound. I quite like that.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

It’s about shining a light on the darkness in the world. As I said before, there is alot of it. Politics, systems and supposed technological advances are failing. I believe in humanity at its core. I think we are easily led but in ourt hearts, we are a smart species with such potential. I think that potential has been throttled. So whilst I will produce tracks that have darker themes there is always a message about hope interwined in the nasty bass!

Synth music is stuffed full of shiny depictions of a past that never really existed. SUB NEON is about playing back reality and still finding the strength to keep going.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

Stop listening to AI slop and support the artists that you vibe with!

Sure, the metal version of Britney Spears is catchy. But do you know why that is?

Because some dude punched a paragraph into a computer and then a Large Language Model scraped the entire internet to arbitrarily pour 50 years of human creativity into a souless digital bucket.

Instead of the product of alot of hours of work, trying new things, cutting stuff and rebuilding a song several times to make sure it has heart, you get a spinning circle of dots for a couple of minutes which then spews out something that sounds…off.

It definitely sounds like alot of things you’ve heard before. But it’s too polished. It’s over engineered. It lacks any real vibe. My view is block it all. Send a message to streaming platforms and social accounts that seek to make a quick buck over a prompt that this is not what humanity is about.

AI has such potential to make life better in so many ways, but it has no place in the arts. Creation is what humanity was built for. So if you like an artist, support them. share their content, buy their music if you can. Go to a gig every so often. If AI is going to take over this part of life too, what as a species do we really have left?

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.subneon.net
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sub_neon/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5fRCoEMGLxq-JHmsVdtqxQ