Various - All The Young Droids: Junkshop Synth Pop 1978-1985 2xLP
$36.98
Label: Night School
Release Date: June 27th, 2025
Standard black vinyl version.
Compiled by Philip King (Boobs, Glitterbest, All The Young Droogs)
Welcome to the forgotten future of synth pop. All The Young Droids is a deep dive into the strange and thrilling underbelly of late-'70s and early-'80s synthesizer music—a world where DIY dreamers, punk misfits, and home-studio auteurs grabbed cheap analog gear and set out to reinvent sound itself. Compiled by Philip King, this 24-track compilation uncovers a vibrant, messy, and beautiful story of what happened when the future was still being wired together by hand.
Rather than polished radio hits, All The Young Droids showcases the magic born from bedrooms, ramshackle studios, and indie labels just finding their way in the post-punk explosion. Here you’ll find obscure synth wave gems, proto-techno experiments, outsider pop flops, and cult classics, all remastered by RPM’s Simon Murphy, many painstakingly restored from rare vinyl due to the loss of original tapes. Complete with extensive liner notes by King and a trove of previously unseen imagery, the compilation is as much a time capsule as it is a celebration.
The story unfolds with sounds as diverse as Gerry & The Holograms’ sardonic pulses, the teenage brilliance of Andreas Dorau’s "Fred Vom Jupiter" (appearing here in its rare English version), and the minimal synth pop perfection of Ian North’s "We’re Not Lonely". Peta Lilly’s feminist minimal wave anthem "I Am A Time Bomb" emerges as a lost treasure, while Selwin Image’s "The Unknown" fizzes with the unmistakable energy of early new wave.
At the same time, All The Young Droids captures the flamboyant and sometimes fruitless ambition of artists like Billy London, whose track Woman offers a glam-sleaze, Lou Reed-style romp through the synth boom, and John Springate’s "My Life", a sprawling synth epic that shifts through multiple moods before soaring back to its stunning refrain.
The compilation also lights up the dancefloor with minimal synth bangers like Design’s "Premonition" and Vision’s "Lucifer’s Friend", while tracing the proto-Hi-NRG energy of The Warlord’s "The Ultimate Warlord" - a homespun track that later became a cult club hit. Other standouts like Disco Volante’s "No Motion" and The Microbes’ robo-funk anthem "Computer Dance" showcase how these artists, with little more than ambition and a few borrowed keyboards, imagined a future of electronic sound.
All The Young Droids challenges the idea that early synth pop was purely minimalist and cold. It reveals a much broader, more chaotic, and more human story: one where desperation bred innovation, where underground anthems rubbed shoulders with major-label misfires, and where the line between junk and treasure blurred into something irresistible. This is not just a history lesson—it’s a celebration of a time when anything seemed possible, and the future was only a chord away.
