Zachary Chacon constructs 2035 as an immersive world of synthesizers, sampled drums, and guitar-driven experimentation. The album draws from electronic pioneers while developing a distinctly contemporary identity. Tracks such as “Wild Crazy” and “Backroads” reveal the project’s contrasting sonic personalities. Retro gaming references provide the foundation, while industrial textures and cinematic arrangements push the music forward. Hollywood Video Game Kill-Bot transforms technological nostalgia into something strikingly unconventional.
From the opening seconds of “Art Life,” Hollywood Video Game Kill-Bot makes one thing immediately clear: 2035 was never designed to sit quietly in the background. This is music with circuitry in its bloodstream and a restless imagination behind the controls. Created by Lawndale, California artist Zachary Chacon, the project operates as a remarkably focused one-man electronic rock laboratory, with Chacon playing all of the instruments himself, programming and arranging through Logic Pro X while using sampled drums as part of the production framework. The result is an album that feels less like a conventional collection of songs and more like an interconnected digital environment.
Chacon’s musical DNA is unusually broad. The pioneering electronic experimentation of Kraftwerk, the darker industrial sensibilities of Skinny Puppy, the polished synthpop language associated with Duran Duran, the abrasive force of Ministry, and the eccentric electronic imagination of Bruce Haack might appear to occupy separate corners of musical history. Yet on 2035, these influences become useful components rather than restrictive templates. Chacon absorbs their technological curiosity and appetite for sonic disruption, then feeds those ideas through an aesthetic that is unmistakably his own.
The album’s fascination with technology never becomes sterile. Quite the opposite. Its digital textures possess an almost tactile quality, as though old circuitry has been pulled apart, rewired and given an unexpectedly physical pulse. Layered 8-bit textures, crackling synthesizers, electronic effects and tightly constructed rhythmic patterns establish a futuristic foundation, while Chacon’s guitar playing repeatedly challenges that architecture. The guitars do not simply provide conventional rock accompaniment. They bend, scrape, echo and morph alongside the electronic elements, creating a conversation between organic instrumentation and programmed sound.
That tension becomes one of 2035‘s defining characteristics. Zachary Chacon understands that the most interesting futuristic music does not necessarily come from making everything sound clean and technologically perfect. Sometimes the future becomes more convincing when it carries evidence of the past. The album’s sounds can evoke the primitive excitement of an old computer game, but they are surrounded by distortion, atmosphere and rhythmic aggression that prevent the nostalgia from becoming sentimental.
“Art Life” establishes that language immediately. Haunting 8-bit tones collide with banging percussion and muted, strummed guitar, creating the sensation of entering an unfamiliar digital landscape. The track feels intentionally skeletal in places, allowing the individual sounds to occupy their own spaces rather than burying everything beneath layers of production. Its appeal comes from the contrast between mechanical repetition and human intervention.
From there, “Race Track” accelerates the record’s futuristic momentum. Synthesizers, electronic flourishes and tightly controlled rhythmic movement give the piece an arcade-inspired propulsion, but the production is sufficiently aggressive to keep it from sounding like a simple retro exercise. Chacon takes the vocabulary of vintage gaming and places it inside a much more contemporary sonic frame.
“Backroads” deepens the retro-computer atmosphere through its combination of layered guitar riffs and cybernetic synth textures. The title suggests something organic and physical, yet the musical landscape is distinctly artificial. That contradiction gives the track much of its character. Guitar and electronics continuously seem to push against each other, with the arrangement expanding rather than settling into a predictable loop.
Then comes “Fuzz,” which retains the album’s 8-bit heartbeat while moving toward something more cinematic. The track illustrates Chacon’s ability to use texture as narrative. Rather than relying on traditional storytelling, he creates an environment in which the listener can mentally construct the scene. It feels like a fragment from an imaginary science-fiction score, where the destination is less important than the atmosphere encountered along the way.
“Wild Crazy” is arguably the album’s most immediate jolt of electricity. It arrives with the force of a digital avalanche and refuses to relinquish its kinetic charge. The track’s relentless energy makes it particularly effective as an antidote to passive listening. It does not politely request attention. It demands it. The contrast with “Backroads” is revealing because the latter is more interested in layers, movement and gradual sonic transformation, while “Wild Crazy” operates through sheer momentum.
The more melodic “Pain” introduces another dimension. Its phrasing provides a little more emotional accessibility without abandoning the experimental identity of the record. The track moves between melody and electronic abstraction, suggesting that Zachary Chacon is just as interested in emotional contour as he is in technological texture.
“Music Making Box” takes repetition in another direction. Its mid-tempo pulse and clearly defined rhythmic structure create a hypnotic effect, almost like watching a mechanical device repeat the same motion while subtle changes accumulate around it. The title itself feels appropriate for a project that treats composition almost like an act of constructing a machine from sound.
“When You Get a Guy” brings twinkling ambient elements into the equation, but beneath those lighter textures remains a persistent rhythmic undercurrent. The juxtaposition gives the track an unusual sense of movement. It can feel airy on the surface while remaining grounded underneath, another example of Chacon’s interest in contrasting sonic layers rather than allowing one texture to dominate completely.
By the time “Alley” arrives, the cinematic possibilities of 2035 are fully established. Haunting electronic tones and kinetic percussion create an environment that feels nocturnal and vaguely mysterious. It is easy to imagine the music accompanying a scene in a futuristic city where abandoned technology still flickers in darkened corridors.
The closing “Flare” brings the album toward its conclusion with dynamic percussion, shimmering keyboards and distant guitar loops. Rather than ending with a grand conventional resolution, the track leaves the listener surrounded by echoes, suggesting that this strange electronic world continues beyond the album’s final moments.
That sense of continuation is important because 2035 is fundamentally an album about atmosphere, texture and musical architecture. Its greatest strength is the way contrasting rhythmic patterns and instrumental beds continually alter the listener’s expectations. Zachary Chacon knows when to make a rhythm feel blunt and physical, when to let a synth become atmospheric, and when to bring guitar into the foreground as a disruptive force.
The album’s instrumental nature also encourages a different kind of listening. Without conventional lyrical narratives dictating exactly what a listener should imagine, the music leaves considerable room for personal interpretation. Each track becomes a kind of cinematic prompt. “Pain” can suggest emotional tension through melody, “Alley” can create a location through atmosphere, and “Wild Crazy” can communicate urgency through sheer sonic velocity. The storytelling happens through arrangement, repetition, timbre and momentum.
Ultimately, Hollywood Video Game Kill-Bot is compelling precisely because Chacon does not appear interested in smoothing the edges off his ideas. 2035 embraces its oddness. It sounds like the product of someone who grew up fascinated by videogames, synthesizers and electronic experimentation, then refused to separate those interests into neat categories. The album’s imagined future is consequently built from fragments of the past: arcade electronics, industrial textures, synthpop colors, distorted guitars and experimental production techniques.
For listeners who have ever wondered what might happen if the golden age of computer game music collided with alternative electro-rock and synth-driven experimentation, 2035 offers a compelling answer. It is cerebral without becoming lifeless, aggressive without relying solely on volume, and nostalgic without becoming trapped by nostalgia.
Hollywood Video Game Kill-Bot has created a record that feels like a transmission from a future assembled out of forgotten machines, damaged game cartridges and restless human imagination. 2035 does not seek permission from conventional genre boundaries. It simply builds its own circuitry, switches it on, and invites the listener inside.
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