Circuit3 – Technology For The Youth

By RingMaster Review on August 27, 2022 • ( 0 )

As the world by the day is seemingly keen to welcome apocalyptic courses in its destiny, momentary escapes for attention and the imagination are eagerly welcomed. Technology For The Youth, the new album from Dublin electro pop artist CIRCUIT3 is one such vehicle to leave the world behind if only for an hour or so, indeed its journey takes listeners to the stars and a history of cosmic exploration with its own life changing dramas.

CIRCUIT3 is the future-retro project of Peter Fitzpatrick, an adventure of space and science with an electronic/electro pop soundtrack which equally embraces the past and new. The lead singles for Technology For The Youth had more than hinted that a journey of enterprise and discovery lay within Fitzpatrick’s third full-length but in fact they only provided a glimpse of its full adventure and provocative imagination.

With its sounds cast through analogue synthesisers, Technology For The Youth is inspired by and bred in Fitzpatrick’s love and fascination of space, one you can assume as keen and lively now as when he was a kid and a fixation eagerly exploring the darker and more secretive stories behind the well-known at a time of the Cold War and the space race. Similarly, musically its creator is sparked by times past, eighties synth pop sound at that core but a proposition bearing its own breath and individuality in tandem with its futuristic air.

Every second of Technology For The Youth is a tale to explore and emotive suggestion to embrace, the smaller instrumental pieces as potent as the full tracks in the grip of ears and sparking of the imagination. These particular moments beginning with album opening Ветерок (Light Breeze) feel like glimpses to larger flights and soundscapes in the journey to the stars and the lives behind it, each an individual orchestration of thoughts and often emotive shadows as further epitomised by the likes of Спутник (satellite), Луна (Luna), and Чайка (Chalka).

50 Years Ago sets the major tone and romance of the record and its electro/synth pop instincts, Fitzpatrick creatively and musically casting a virulent contemplation of word and sound with lively catchiness. There is a touch of Thomas Dolby meets Landscape to the song and at times the more shadowy hue of OMD but as consistently proven across the release, the track weaves its own breath and character of enterprise.

Just as infectious in touch and presence is Star City, an animated dance of light and sound instantly enticing ears before the track similarly orchestrated body and voice into eager collusion. Equally thoughts and contemplation found themselves triggered by the tale of the lyrics and Fitzpatrick’s just as magnetic tones, a joyous but shadow embracing web of temptation, the latter just as fertile within the two parts of Weightless. Part 1 is a step into trepidation and the intriguing mystery of rich curiosity while, later in the release, Part 2 is an insurgent moment of resignation and dark awakening.

In between, Blinded By The Sun builds on the caliginous atmosphere of the first part of the pair, its contemplation like an evolving glide through bright hope and fantasy and a darker reality but another inescapably compelling experience within the album as too the melancholically absorbing and darkly intriguing and subsequently despair tanned story of Transmissions.

With every passing moment fair to say that Technology For The Youth had us enthralled and entrenched in its tales, the slim but thickly manipulative Valentina Fly a gossamer seduction with a compelling grip and instrumental Jupiter City an evolving landscape for the imagination to conjure with, the following Spacewalking equally rich and suggestive with its proposed unity a lesson for now as much as a statement on the past.

From the climatic piece Лайка (Laika), Future Radio shares its coruscating fusion of melodic crystals and atmospheric intimation with just as engaging and lively vocals within electronic enterprise. A Buggles meets Bill Nelson breath to the song only adds to its resourceful captivation and inescapable burrowing under the skin while Overview Effect shares an ethereal romance of sound and reflection. With the guest tones of Alessia Turcato in duet with Fitzpatrick at its heart, the track is a warm caress of the senses and persistently welcomed.

Closed out by In The End (We Become Closer), another evocative tapestry of voice, electronics and intimation, Technology For The Youth proved a captor of ears and imagination from start to finish. Indeed it struck a spark to further explore the seeds to its stories and explorations too, the thickly enjoyable album providing the kind of escape and source of adventure we can probably all do with.

Technology For The Youth is out now via AnalogueTrash; available @ https://circuit3.bandcamp.com/album/technology-for-the-youth