CIRCA 99’s debut album Lost In Space is the kind of record you’d imagine being made by someone in a bedroom studio with way too much free time and not nearly enough self-control over cool sounds once they’re discovered.
With over 10 tracks, the album weaves elements of psychedelic pop, electro-funk, synth-heavy production and ambient textures together in a debut record that feels at once highly produced yet intensely personal. Based in Toms River, New Jersey, CIRCA 99 wrote, recorded, mixed and mastered the album on their own over the course of about a year.
This incredibly hands-on process contributes greatly to the record’s appeal. Live instrumentation (bass, guitar, vocals) weaves and overlaps with electronic production, creating tracks packed with details that are never quite enough to overload and feeling more thought-out than overly produced or complicated. The studio functions as another instrument for the album, where the sounds were layered, altered, resampled and generally noodled with until they sounded just right.
The influences, while obvious throughout Lost In Space (think Tame Impala’s psych, Daft Punk and Justice’s electro, Nile Rogers guitar funk and Brian Eno’s ethereal soundscapes pop up throughout the album). It could so easily have become just a musical menu (‘Tame Impala + Justice + Nile Rogers + Eno = Lost In Space?’) but somehow CIRCA 99 ties it all together and the songs are locked in tight as a result.
Opener SATELLITES IN LOVE immediately sets the stage with glittering synths and a pulsating bassline. It brings the cosmic visuals its subject matter describes, reflecting how strange and difficult it can be to be close to someone without being sure of where you are, or even that you belong there.
Hindsight ramps up the tempo further with funky guitars, pounding percussion and expansive vocals describing a common human phenomenon where clarity always seems to come after the chaos has passed, which, as always, is less helpful than having it present during.
In one of the most cohesive and best moments of the album, Eyes Wide Shut blends lush, synth-pop production with the idea of emotional evasion: knowing the damn wheels are falling off and purposefully not seeing it and refusing to address the elephant. The track holds emotional ground despite the sprawling sounds, providing us with the kind of song you can dance to while slowly realizing you just made like three stupid decisions.
The tracks FALL INTO ME and ENERGY work as the album’s centerpieces of movement and exploration of introspection. The tracks focus on the electro-funk sound even more, creating groovy basslines, filtered synths, vocal chops and lively drums. But due to live guitar playing, they maintain an organic and real sound instead of anything too mechanical.
Moving to a more anxious state of mind, NO TIME includes pulsing synths and repetitive rhythms that create the feeling of the constant passage of time that many have when you feel stuck in a monotonous routine. It seems like no one remembered to build a pause button into anything.
The album shifts toward more active decision making with MAKE MY MOVE; the live guitar and tight percussion lend the song movement forward to embrace whatever came before it.
The album concludes with GOOD NIGHT, which is so laidback it nearly floats away, where CIRCA 99 embraces an ethereal, peaceful ending where the song is allowed to fully drift off instead of ending abruptly on a more definitive note.
This last moment emphasizes how the album works well as an album, as a whole. Each song individually tells its own story but collectively takes the listener on an overall journey that takes us from uncertainty and longing to acceptance and a sense of direction. The bedroom studio sounds truly expand for the purposes of the record, so whether it’s layered synths, guitars, bass, percussion, vocals, or effects, CIRCA 99 creates a sound larger than life.
There’s not necessarily anything new being explored throughout the record, but sometimes reinventing the wheel and adding a new set of sounds is all there needs to be. CIRCA 99 nails this throughout Lost In Space to make an album that has the ambition, production value and emotional range, but doesn’t lose a single shred of intimacy.
All in all, it’s a pretty great starting place for CIRCA 99, because Lost In Space does everything else pretty well except answer where exactly it was trying to go in the first place.
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About the Author
A tenured media critic known working as a ghost writer, freelance critic for various publications around the world, the former lead writer of review blogspace Atop The Treehouse and content creator for Manila Bulletin.
