Christine is a music producer, greatly known in the synthwave and 80’s revival music circles. Her music as “KRISTINE” is featured in “Cobra Kai” series, “Friday The 13th Game” and “Blazing Chrome”. She came back recently after almost a decade with hew new hit single called “Heatwave”. Rockoverdose.gr and Apostolos Pantazoglou had the chance to talk with her about her new music, her influences, the synthwave scene and much more.
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Rockoverdose.gr: Good evening Christine and welcome to Rockoverdose.gr
Kristine: Hi Apostolos and thanks for the invitation!
Rockoverdose.gr: Out of nowhere and while no-one was expecting it, you surprised us with you first track after many years, entitled “Heatwave”.
Kristine: The truth is that I planned it this way, to come out of nowhere. I had it in my mind for a long time and was waiting for the day it would happen. I had decided long ago that my next post would only be an announcement of a new release so that’s why there was silence for so long. It was a great moment when I posted the new artwork and release date and started seeing people get so excited!
Rockoverdose.gr: I think that it’s an amazing song and I see that your fans and synthwave fans in general agree with me. Did you expect that it would turn out so good?
Kristine: No! First, I thought that no one would even see it honestly, the way socials are now. And surely, I didn’t expect people to actually like it. I thought that the song was good but honestly did not know if it was as good as my previous ones or what people would think. It was the first one after so many years after all. I was also overthinking about some of the technical stuff, as I’m now working with a new mixing engineer, and I was a bit nervous because I wanted the song to be cohesive with my previous works but to also sound better. Thankfully everything turned out better than I thought and I was so happy for all the love I received, for all the people who were still there waiting, I was truly moved.. There were so many obstacles but I’m so grateful to be back here doing this again.
Rockoverdose.gr: The truth is that even though I was hoping to hear new material from you at some point, I didn’t expect it to happen. How did “Heatwave” happen?
Kristine: I knew from the moment I wrote it that this would be the first track to be released when I would eventually come back. I’ve been working on it for a while, although nobody knew. I was about to release it in ’22 actually, a different version of it, but I cancelled it because it didn’t feel exactly right. After that, I couldn’t work on music for some time, up until April where I started working on it again, I re-did most of it and it was finally ready, so it’s been a long time coming.
Rockoverdose.gr: Is this song a precursor of a new album?
Kristine: I don’t want to say too much, I’m planning more short term now, as I just got back to it again. But for sure an album is the ultimate goal and I will do my best to make it happen. For now I want to do some singles and remixes first.
Rockoverdose.gr: “Heatwave” sounds just like you continued from where you stopped.
Kristine: That was the point! I did write a lot of songs the years I’ve been away, some were a bit different sounding. But I realized that my classic style is the one that people like the most, it’s also the one I like the most and what I do best. So I definitely wanted this new chapter to begin right where the previous one ended, with that familiar sound.
Rockoverdose.gr: When I heard your album “Kristine” for the first time (thank you Alim) – the summer of 2020 if I remember correctly – I was in shock. I don’t exactly how to describe it but the music, the feeling, the voice, the lyrics and the whole album in general, was everything I had in my mind for the best decade – for me – ever. The 80’s. When you were writing the album did you had that in mind or did it just happen?
Kristine: Thank you very much! I didn’t start out with any specific plan; I just started writing songs for fun. The sound came out like that naturally, right from the start. I don’t intentionally try to write something retro but it obviously is, so I definitely continued on with that sound for the rest of the album.
Rockoverdose.gr: The album was released in 2015 and at the moment it’s really hard, even almost impossible to find it. Are there any plans for one more re-release? Because even the first re-release is sold out.
Kristine: Yes, I’m working on the represses for vinyl and CD, they will be out on NewRetroWave Records. I just got the vinyl re-mastered and re-designed both. It is sold out because, for some reason, I didn’t want to re-release the old material before releasing something new. Also, there weren’t many copies made initially and that was many years ago, so it got quite hard to find, which was never my intention. Now everything can finally be restocked, plus new items too hopefully.
Rockoverdose.gr: One of the tracks of the album is “Burning Fever”, which we can hear in the popular TV series “Cobra Kai”. How did that happen?
Kristine: One of the composers of “Cobra Kai” is also a synthwave producer from the early days. One day he emailed me and asked me to sing on a vocal track he wanted to pitch to the creators. Of course I did the demo, it came out really good but it didn’t end up happening because they didn’t want a vocal track in that season yet. The music supervisor listened to my album though and asked for “Burning Fever” to use in one of the episodes so it turned out great after all. That was an incredible moment, when I received the contract from Sony Pictures and when I heard my song in the series, even though it plays in the background!
Rockoverdose.gr: You’ve worked with some of the biggest names of the synth scene like Mitch Murder, Dance With The Dead, FM Attack. I believe that this really shows that your material is high level and that you belong in this category also.
Kristine: I guess they heard something in me that they liked and it was a time where it was easy to do such collaborations because the scene was so small. It was quite different in 2014, for example DWTD were not as popular as they are now. It was a great time where we just made music, we didn’t think much about it, we all knew each other and everything was friendly and cool.
Rockoverdose.gr: How did you enter the synthwave scene and what are your influences?
Kristine: Back in 2010, I heard some synthwave/80’s revival songs on YouTube and I was blown away. I immediately knew that I had to do it too! I already had experience in composing, production and recording from a previous solo project and from a band I had before that. So I just wrote my first song “The Danger” and uploaded it on YouTube and Facebook and that was how it began. After that I wrote “Modern Love” and “Summer Long Gone” and released the EP, which was my first official release, having just been signed to an indie label.
My influences at the time were for sure those first synthwave producers (Tesla Boy, Anoraak, Futurecop, Electric Youth) and later mostly original 80’s artists, mainly pop rock/AOR bands (obviously Don Henley, TOTO, Heart, Stevie Nicks etc). But always keeping my own sound, the one I had since the beginning.
Rockoverdose.gr: It feels like synth music and all the sub-genres are very popular now. Why do you think is this happening?
Kristine: Certainly because of things like Drive and Stranger Things, these made nostalgia mainstream and that also included the music and fashion. And people needed that, whether you lived it the first time around or as a younger person now, it feels so good to go there, especially in a time like the present. We keep thinking this trend will come to an end but it’s still going strong! Personally, I will keep doing the same style either way but the timing certainly has been great for synthwave.
Rockoverdose.gr: Are you thinking of doing gigs at some point?
Kristine: No, even though I had offers from abroad and locally, mainly for festivals. I’ve done some gigs in the past but it requires so much preparation and I mostly want to proceed with my recordings. That is the side of music I love the most, the creative side. To be alone in my studio, escaping the world and just writing, imagining stories and solving the production riddles and little puzzles. Doing live gigs is necessary if you want to be famous, but that’s not the main goal for me honestly. I do want to do some other things though, like maybe a video clip. We will see what the future will bring!
Rockoverdose.gr: Thank you so much for your time.
Kristine: Thank you for the great questions!
