A minimal italo jam by Mecha Maiko featuring a remix by the beautiful minds of Hyperlink Dream Sync.

Support on bandcamp:
https://newretrowave.bandcamp.com/album/just-some-guy

Follow HDS:
https://hyperlinkdreamsync.bandcamp.com/

Just Some Guy (Hyperlink Dream Sync Remix)

Just Some Guy

This was once a guilty pleasure on my hard drive but I don't feel guilty anymore~ 

Art by Nate Utesch // utesch.xyz
Photos by Zackery Hobler // zackeryhobler.ca

Lyrics:

Big machines that gather our food
Bots that try to tell when we’re rude
Is this really the plan that we made
Razing the ground that we simulate

You make me want to shut it down, oh

Selling the worthless to much greater fools
Normalization of surveillance tools
Give it a price and now it has worth
Oh what a sociopath we have birthed

(You make me want to shut it down
oh, oh, o-o-o-oh—ooh)

You make me want to shut it down, oh
Oh, you make me want to shut it down
Oh-ooh
You make me want to shut it down (I don’t think this should exist, no)
and start anew (I don’t think this should exist, no)
and make something better
You make me want to shut it down (I don’t think this should exist, no)
and yes I will (I don’t think this should exist, no)
help it grow
oh-oh

Shut It Down

Shut It Down (NewRetroWave Records, 2022)

Mecha Maiko (AKA Hayley Stewart) is back with third album NOT OK, which could end up changing the entire landscape of synthwave. The Toronto-based artist has always stood out among synthwave acts for her inventive, dogma-smashing approach to the genre. Her 2018 debut, Mad But Soft, and EP Okiya, from 2019, showed an artist who could produce experimental yet catchy, complicated yet minimalist songs that evoke the delicate and often turbulent relationship between humans and machines. She continued that streak with Let’s in 2019, and loaded it with early ‘90s house and contemporary electro-pop elements that took the songs to dark dance floors splashed in neon pink. It was deeply human but inherently mechanistic.

A lot has happened in the world since then, and NOT OK reflects that — even if the foundation of some of its songs stem from that pre-pandemic, post-Let’s era. Although she started work on the album at rural escape she referred to as “Synthpop Farm,” surrounded by a cornucopia of flora and fauna, she finalized the record in 2021 in Toronto with engineer and producer Jack Marko.

NOT OK tackles the scandalous level of trials the world faces today, including “bogus conspiracy theories, racism, sexism, violence, and environmental destruction,” she says. However, she does this via a kinetic blend of dance-heavy rhythms, captivatingly melodic synths, and an array of experimental sonics that together keep listeners engaged throughout the record’s 50-minute run.

“Hopefully it can validate some of the feelings and frustrations that others have been grappling with, and to serve as a reminder that we don't have to accept things as they are,” Mecha Maiko says. “I also hope it inspires people to deepen their connections to nature, and see just how beautiful life off-screen is.”

- Aaron Vehling, Vehlinggo.com
Full Album Liner Notes Here: (www.mechamaiko.com/not-ok-liner-notes)

NOT OK

Broken Tongue

Webs

The Kids

Hard

400 Humans

Sunny, Softly (I Feel Love)

Innocent

Remix by https://soundcloud.com/makeupandvanityset
Original track from the album "NOT OK" by Mecha Maiko.
© 2022 Cool Tapes

Shut It Down (Makeup and Vanity Set Remix) • Free/Name-your-price

A scrappy lil' set I did to shake the cobwebs off, warts and all. First three tracks I played that night are missing, sorry!
Recorded live at Dundas Video in Toronto, Canada for Neon Nights. Neon Nights is a synthwave/80s night that happens the first Thursday of every month at Dundas Video. Follow: https://www.dancealonepromotions.com/neonnights
                                 
TRACKLIST:            
Slaves Of War - Credit 00                                             
Bocca Nights - Dilemma                                        
Castlevania - Ton Globiter                                          
Spend The Night With You - Gino Felino                                           
V More Karabli - Rapha                                         
Burnt-Out Celebrity - The Gruesome Twosome                                  
CHLOROFORM (FEAT. MECHA MAIKO) - Bulkhead                                              
Her Violence Beauty - Curses                                                
Familiar Yet Strange - Remute                                                
Sunny, Softly -  Mecha Maiko                                           
Robotic Understanding  - Vexkiddy                                              
Dial 8 for Sins - Pin up Club                                           
Turning Dub - Headman                                               
Data Share - Makeup and Vanity Set                                 
Just Some Guy - Mecha Maiko                                           
New Frustration - ADULT.                                                
NOT ABOUT - Headman                                               
Fase Rem - Marcello Giordani DJ feat. Ready In LED               
End Of Your Life (Maiovvi's Freestyle Rave Remix)  - Mecha Maiko                                           
Rockman (Lauer & Saap Remix) - The Working Elite                                     
Change Alot (Makeup and Vanity Set Remix) - Mecha Maiko                                           
Inspector Norse - Todd Terje

Neon Nights DJ Set - Mecha Maiko (12.01.2022)

Now I've really done it. The first handful of tracks from this night are missing - you'll just have to join in-person next time to enjoy the full set!

Pink  Footpath - Loui$                                        
Out There (Garage Mix) - Friends Of Matthew                           
Vorrei Tanto - Avida (ft Alexander Robotnick)               
Bug (Bulkhead Remix) - Bulkhead ft. Mecha Maiko                     
Spacer Woman - Charlie                                      
Altar Room - Timothy J. Fairplay                               
Last Tram To Ivry - COMMUTER                                     
Street Boys (Extended Dub Mix)- DMX Krew                                     
Phones - Mecha Maiko                                  
Egypt Egypt - The Egyptian Lover                           
X2000 (extended version) - Storken & Aurele Zero                        
Electro Elite - Maschine Brennt                              
Techno World - Go Nuclear                                   
G.T.II° - Ryuichi Sakamoto (坂本龍一)                      
Jack's Jive (DMX Krew Remix) - Riff                                         
Earth (Passarani Hinrg Remix) - Essaie Pas

Neon Nights DJ Set - Mecha Maiko (02.18.2023)

Crimson sky
Angry tides
Sipping tea
Safe inside
Well-insured
Stowed offshore
Watch them fight
Sip some more

I think I might kill 'em this time
Think I might kill 'em this time
Looking pretty easy
Look you know it's easy

I think I might kill 'em this time
Think I might kill 'em this time
Look you know it's easy
Trust me now it's easy

---
Written and produced by Hayley Stewart.
Mastered by Neil Scrivin.

Bunker

I recorded this set (halfway through my opening track) and forgot to post it. Here you go! Enjoy some lower bpm retro jams!

Recorded July 14 at Dundas Video, Toronto for Neon Nights.
https://www.facebook.com/neonnightstoronto/

Neon Nights DJ Mix (live) - July 14, 2023

Bike night, remastered in 2018 for Mecha Maiko's debut album, Mad but Soft, released via New Retro Wave Records.

This track was originally released in 2017, in the Synth Love Affair 2.0 Compilation. Released by Future 80s Records and Synthetix Sundays.
Get the whole release here: https://future80s.bandcamp.com/album/synth-love-affair-vol-2
Fun fact: No bicycles were mentioned in this song.

ღ ღ ღ 

Lyrics:

Wipe away the black beneath my eyes
Open up the crack in the wall into another time
Walking naked past the window
Tell me where did all that shame go?
Who cares who’s looking in
Cause everyone has skin

And I was so naive to think
Your twin was roaming free
So I could leave you alone
Because it took so long to hear that you were done with me

But then I heard you
The language of your eyes

I could feel you shake before you said a single word to me
Oh, it’s alright

Oh, you were looking back, oh
Ah, I found what I need
Back, oh
Back, oh
Back, ah
Back, turn back now
Back, oh,
Back, you were looking back

You were looking back

Mad But Soft

Bike Night

Mad but Soft is Mecha Maiko's debut album, released February 23 2018 by New Retro Wave Records. 

Lyrics:

Now that I feel for you
I think you feel it too
Was it the only blue
we saw?

And as I fade to black
this shadow's all I have
The sky's a melting glue
We fall

Just a passing face in the back of the frame

The patterns pulsing bright
We swallow up the light

Fade To Black

Mad but Soft is Mecha Maiko's debut album, released February 23 2018 by New Retro Wave Records. 

Lyrics:

Don’t turn away
I’ve been waiting just to catch you now
oh, oh I must
Confront you

Tired of text 
Scrolling out from out of your mouth
I’m here to cut away the fat
And leave with a human being
Oh

Please forgive me
If I hurt you
I’m just trying here 
to show you
how much I care
so I‘m here to pull your hair


Don’t call me wild
I’m not a special case to file away
cause it’s more convenient for you that way
If I’m an angry child
No no no

If you don’t have the motive
if you’re happy being a slave
You keep your fellow men in the gutter
While you hide in the car all dry and safe

Let me lift the hood
Watch those neurons fire
This gift to you, I give
a jolt awake, pressure on the wire

Let me lift the hood
Watch those neurons fire
This gift to you, I give
a jolt awake, pressure on the wire


Forgive me
If I hurt you
I’m just trying here 
to show you
how much I care
so I pull your hair, oh

Please forgive me
If I hurt you
I’m just trying here 
to show you
how much I care
so I pull your hair

Give you just a little kick
Give you juat a little kick
Cause you usually make me sick

Auto Fire

Mad but Soft is Mecha Maiko's debut album, released February 23 2018 by New Retro Wave Records. 

Lyrics:

Ooh,
Just another memory

…

Sirens hanging thick upon the wall
Noting the connections I recall
Feel my being slip into the mould
Is it just the instinct, trained to dig the hole?

Go, go, go, take another picture
See a face that you know is a piece of glass
Like the widow in a dying garden

Go, go, go, take another corner
How divine to cruelly submit oneself
To the monster in a flimsy cage

Sirens hanging thick upon the wall
Noting the connections I recall
Feel my being slip into the mould
Is it just the instinct, trained to dig the hole?

False Memories

Mad but Soft is Mecha Maiko's debut album, released February 23 2018 by New Retro Wave Records. 

Lyrics:

I’m sorry you don’t know who you are
You can try to take it out on me
You find it easier to speak to children
But baby I’m twenty-three

I see the vices that are running your life
Because you’ve given up on being good
I’m not naive because I’m staying true to myself
You’re cold because you know you should

(Chorus:)
So where’s your contract?
Do it for the art while you’ve been doing it all for the fame
So where’s your contract?
Trade away your dignity and hope that we’ll all do the same?
So where’s your contract?
Manage your decay by using youth with more creative brains
So where’s your contract?
Maximum hours, for minimum wage

Ooh, ooh, ooh, no it’s not okay

I’m sorry I can’t help how I feel
I don’t want it bottled up like you
’Til I feel another person
growing old inside
waiting for this girl to die
I would never survive
I would never survive if I had to do things that you do
Just to make some green and blue

(Chorus)

Ooh, ooh, ooh, no it’s not okay

And I can see
you’re making cash hand over fist from me
Can I get the same?
Working hard just for them to forget my name

In the dark each day
Cause you’re afraid of all the shit that I might just say
If you let me out
Cause I know too well what you’re about

I don’t need you - you need me
I don’t want your hand to feed me
Tired of being so obedient
to something so damn seedy

Contract

Mad but Soft is Mecha Maiko's debut album, released February 23 2018 by New Retro Wave Records.

Lyrics (© @Femmepop):
I’m travelling further than you.
I’m burning brighter than you.
And nothing you can say and nothing you can do
Can change the fact. 
And nothing you can say and nothing you can do
Can ever change that.

Chorus
Tomodachi, I don’t think so.
Tomodachi, you were never were so. x 2

You never knew what it meant. x 2

Verse 2 
Discarded, your time in my life.
Rewarded, now I know what it meant.
And nothing you can say and nothing you can do
Can ever change that. 
And nothing you can say and nothing you can do
Will ever change that fact.

Chorus
Tomodachi, I don’t think so.
Tomodachi, you were never were so. x 2
You never knew what it meant. x 2

And nothing you can say and nothing you can do
Can change that fact. 
And nothing you can say and nothing you can do
Will ever change that.

Final Chorus
Tomodachi, you never were so.
Tomodachi, I don’t think so.

Lyrics Copyright Margaret O’Sullivan 2017

Tomodachi ft. Femmepop

Mad but Soft is Mecha Maiko's debut album, released February 23 2018 by New Retro Wave Records.

Lyrics (© @Dana-jean-phoenix):
Cold
You’re looking so
Cold
I’m feeling so
Cold
Don’t freeze me out here it’s just too
Cold
You’re looking so
Cold
I’m feeling so
Cold
Don’t freeze me out here, don’t be so
(repeat)

Where you running?
Where you going?
When you’re looking back at me
Eyes so blurry
Tears of flurries
When you look who do you see?

Well that’s a bold move, that
Keep telling yourself you’re right on track
But darling you can’t deal
so you’re running from what’s real
And with every cold exhale
from your tired breath you tell
yourself you’ll be happy
but you know that without me
you’ll just be

Cold
You’re looking so
Cold
I’m feeling so
Cold
Don’t freeze me out here it’s just too
Cold
You’re looking so
Cold
I’m feeling so
Cold
Don’t freeze me out here, don’t be so 
(repeat)

I can hear your heart beating
I’m the heat your body’s needing

Cold ft. Dana Jean Phoenix

Mad but Soft is Mecha Maiko's debut album, released February 23 2018 by New Retro Wave Records. 

Lyrics:
Stop right there
I feel it in my hair
The slowing down of time
when we’re on the island

Drink me up
A vessel, buttercup
They say the colours shine 
if you really like it

Take me down
to where the sailors drown
and all the waves build tombs 
with their electric rooms

Dark black cloud,
please come and be my shroud
This little moth’s gone blind, pressed against the neon
Mad but soft,
ready now to sit and watch
red marquees and argyle ties
crash into their deathbeds

No more kids
to prove that we’re convinced
that there’s a nice, safe room
without a poison bloom

and we’ve been so ambitious
and we make laws that kill
without a voice of reason
without a breath at all

If you wanna feel bad, then hang back
but if you’re only kinda sad, join the pack
Oh, pray for sudden rain
Oh, might not win again

Stop right there
Stop right there
I feel it now
I’m feeling down

Mad but Soft

Mad but Soft is Mecha Maiko's debut album, released February 23 2018 by New Retro Wave Records.

Lyrics:

Can you feel my heartbeat?
Underneath the moon there's another side of me
Can you feel my heartbeat?
Like a dark machine breaking through the concrete

Can you feel my heartbeat?
Can you feel my heartbeat?
Can you feel my heartbeat?
Can you feel my heart beating?

For you
I'll show you things you never knew
When the sky fades to red from blue
Just close your eyes and take my hand 

Oh,
There isn't a place I'd rather ever go
When the city lights take us deep into their glow
It's an electric heat pulsing straight through my feet

Oh,
There isn't a place I'd rather ever go
It's the future and I didn't even know
It's an electric heat pulsing straight through my feet

Can you feel, my heart still beats for you
Can you feel, my heart’s still beating for you
Can you feel, my heart still beats for you
Can you feel, my heart’s still beating for you

Can you feel my heartbeat?
Underneath the moon there's another side of me
Can you feel my heartbeat?
Like a dark machine breaking through the concrete

Electric Heat

Mad but Soft is Mecha Maiko's debut album, released February 23 2018 by New Retro Wave Records.

Lyrics (with some repetition cut out):

I won’t start anew
I want you where I am
I’ll lie on the cold hard ground if it’s with you

And I see it in your eyes you’re waiting
All your life
And I see it in your eyes you’re waiting
Waiting again for me

I won’t start anew
It’s sad but still it’s true
I want you where I am
I won’t start anew 
It’s sad but still it’s true
I’ll lie on the cold hard ground if it’s with you

Cold Hard Ground

The mysterious 1986 Big Hair Remix of Mecha Maiko's "Auto Fire." Available for free/pwyc!

Mad Soft Butt is a compilation of remixes done by a handful of Mecha Maiko's musical senpais and kouhais. Enter into a world of varied textures and bumpin' beats, where classic synthwave elements mingle with genres you wouldn't expect to have on the same record. This baby's got more guilty pleasures than your anime list.

Hear the original album: newretrowave.bandcamp.com/album/mad-but-soft

Mad Soft Butt

Download/Buy

Auto Fire (1986 Big Hair Remix)

@radiowolfmusic's stunning re-imagination of Mecha Maiko's "Contract." Available for free/pwyc!

Mad Soft Butt is a compilation of remixes done by a handful of Mecha Maiko's musical senpais and kouhais. Enter into a world of varied textures and bumpin' beats, where classic synthwave elements mingle with genres you wouldn't expect to have on the same record. This baby's got more guilty pleasures than your anime list.

Hear the original album: newretrowave.bandcamp.com/album/mad-but-soft

Contract (Radio Wolf Remix)

Hi! Nice to meet you. I’m Mecha Maiko. I work for mother. Ya, these are all remixes. Please enjoy them, ok?

Remix by @bulkhead-2.
Watch the video: https://www.facebook.com/mechamaiko/videos/2449261588637871/

Album design by Rafael Farias. 
Mastered by Slade Templeton at Influx Studios in Bern, CH. 
Made with support from Zoey Records. 

Track 1 features samples of infinite path to eternity and shinkansen, passengers trains, cargo, crows by OR poiesis. Track 8 features a sample of at 20:00, every night by OR poiesis.

Buy on Juno

Bug (Bulkhead Remix)

Mecha Maiko is back to blow you away with her most dance-oriented record to date. For Let’s! she has drawn inspiration from her favourite upbeat 90s dance and freestyle jams to create a sound that is uniquely hers. Aimed at a more DJ-friendly approach, these tracks will find a happy home on the dance floor.

Mecha Maiko has taken a stylized, deliberate approach to the writing process with hardware accompaniments that expand on the stylistic framework laid out in Okiya, released earlier this year. This record draws on the anxiety felt in a late-stage capitalist society and seeks to agitate that uncomfortable energy within us to shake us from our collective paralysis of shock. Inspiring, uplifting and motivating, these songs are unmistakably laser-lit dirges of the dystopia.

End Of Your Life

Apathy

Meet Me At The Arcade (ft. Vandal Moon)

Change Alot

Trust

Phones

Alive

Mecha Maiko is a Juno-nominated genre-fluid electronic project by Hayley Stewart. She is a current member of @hyperlinkdreamsync and was the lead producer and a vocalist for Dead Astronauts from 2011-2016.

Mecha Maiko

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