Beloved British synthwave band GUNSHIP have just released a brand-new song and video. True to form, the Ready Player One homage “Art3mis & Parzival” is a massive and cinematic dreamy ballad that comes bundled with a cool video made in the style of classic video games, along with a fantastic opportunity to win a specially-made, full-sized arcade machine. Dan Haigh, Alex Westaway, and Alex Gingell are always great to their fans, that’s for sure.
About the Gunship Contest
The release of “Art3mis & Parzival” is accompanied by an interactive easter egg hunt for fans. And it’s a cool one at that. In order to win a custom-made GUNSHIP arcade machine, filled with 2,000 classic games, fans will need to decode hidden messages found both in the “Art3mis & Parzival” video and associated Spotify playlist in order to unlock the competition’s password-protected final gate. You can access said gate here.
GUNSHIP Takes on Cynicism
In a press release the band said their inspiration for the song was the spirit of Ready Player One, namely the concepts of the power of the 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,” they said in their statement. “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.”
About the ‘Art3mis & Parzival’ Music Video
The video for “Art3mis & Parzival” was directed by the artist Genuine Human (Jason Tammemagi). It was painstakingly created with pixel-art techniques employed in an homage to genuine ’80s video game graphics from classic gaming systems: – first, Atari 2600 and Commodore 64, and later, the offerings of Nintendo and Sega. In the spirit of Ready Player One, the video also references more than 80 classic games, movies, TV shows, and albums, according to a press release.
“I wanted to capture the romance, the dreamy quality of the track,” Tammemagi said in a press statement. “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,” he added. “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 an 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.”
Read more about GUNSHIP from Vehlinggo. There’s the 2015 interview and the coverage for their contribution to The Rise of the Synths.
