The Anatomy of a Synthare: Exploring Electronic Music’s Most Iconic Subculture and Sound

When electronic music began its steady creep out of experimental academic laboratories and into the mainstream cultural consciousness during the late 1970s and 1980s, it didn’t just introduce a new palette of sounds—it birthed entire tribes.

While the English-speaking world might look back at the era through the lens of “synth-pop fans,” “goths,” or “new romantics,” Scandinavian music culture coined a precise, affectionate, and fiercely loyal term for these disciples of voltage-controlled sound: the syntare.

Straddling the line between a subcultural identity and a reverence for pioneering musical technology, the syntare represents a fascinating intersection of DIY fashion, electronic devotion, and a historical obsession with machines that changed music forever.

1. Who (or What) is a Syntare?

In Sweden and broader Nordic underground scenes during the 1980s, teenagers and young adults gravitating toward electronic music—groups like Depeche Mode, Front 242, DAF, and Human League—found themselves united by a shared sonic obsession.

While traditional rock purists and heavy metal fans clung to the organic wail of the electric guitar, the syntare embraced the cold, clinical, yet intensely emotional pulse of synthesizers and drum machines.

“Being a person listening to this type of music was therefore a synthare… The synthare was always in conflict with the metal heads listening to 80s metal.”

The term captures both the fan base and the aesthetic: individuals who saw beauty in square waves, low-pass filters, and sequencer loops. It wasn’t just about passive listening; it was an identity forged in dark clubs, smoke machines, and record shops specializing in import wax from Sheffield, Düsseldorf, and Antwerp.

2. The Technological Counterpart: The Synare Connection

Interestingly, the word syntare also echoes a piece of hardware that defined the physical percussion of that exact era: the Synare drum synthesizer.

Manufactured by Star Instruments starting in the mid-1970s, Synare pads (most notably the iconic, flying-saucer-shaped Synare 3) gave drummers their first taste of tactile electronic sound. Generating analog swoops, white-noise crashes, and sci-fi laser hits, the Synare became a staple of disco, funk, and early electronic body music (EBM).

Though etymologically, syntare as a subcultural label stems simply from the Swedish word for “synth” (synt) with a personal suffix, the parallel is poetic. The syntare (the fan) and the Synare (the drum) both embodied the futuristic ethos of an era obsessed with moving beyond acoustic limitations.

3. The Uniform: Aesthetics of the Dark and Electric

Like any robust youth subculture, the syntare developed a distinct visual language. Heavily influenced by the stark, minimalist, and industrial imagery of their musical heroes, the visual profile of a classic 1980s syntare typically featured:

• Monochromatic Palette: Dominated heavily by stark blacks, sharp whites, and occasional flashes of neon or metallic silver.
• Structured Silhouettes: Trench coats, leather jackets, pointed boots, and sharp geometric hair cuts—often bridging post-punk bleakness with futuristic sci-fi aspiration.
• DIY Attitude: Custom pins, band patches, and accessories celebrating obscure electronic cassette releases and synth-label imprints.

4. Legacy in the Modern Soundscape

Decades later, the fierce tribalism between metalheads and syntares has largely mellowed into mutual respect, but the legacy of the electronic music devotee remains stronger than ever.

With the modern resurgence of analog hardware, modular synth communities, and genres like synthwave, darkwave, and minimal synth, the spirit of the syntare has found new life globally. Current bedroom producers and hardware enthusiasts carrying laptops, pocket operators, and desktop polysynths are, in many ways, the direct spiritual descendants of those 1980s Scandinavian youth standing by the speakers, mesmerized by the magic of a manipulated oscillator.

Ultimately, to be a syntare was—and is—to believe that electricity can sing, that machines can feel, and that the future of music sounds best when it’s synthesized.