[Beats In Space Records]

There are a fair number of people currently making music like “Afterlife.” Amongst those occupying that woozy, drugged-out corridor of house music and succeeding are Heatsick, John Talabot, and the Future Times crew. So in that regard, this lead single from Eddie Ruscha’s forthcoming full-length on Tim Sweeny’s Beats In Space label isn’t particularly novel. But by god, is it infectious. Secret Circuit hails from Los Angeles and the track lends itself to the city, with all included pieces coated in a hazy smog — from the wry bass line to Ruscha’s enchanted vocals, swimming casually through a patch of receding analog bursts. The song’s structure is comparably loopy. The vocals dissolve into the mix about a third of the way through the eight-minute runtime, and given the general laws concerning songwriting, you’re left expecting them to reprieve towards the tail of the track. They don’t, though, and the whole thing kind of just burns itself out. Considering its passive nature, “Afterlife” will likely receive a majority of its rub during the warm-up portion of most evenings, but it could certainly also make for a moment of absolute euphoric bliss with proper peak-time introduction.

Vakula’s remix on the flip reels in some of the daydreamy, ADD-riddled nature of the original, but not by much. The vocals are practically non-existent, buried deep amongst a trance-inducing shuffle of a beat that’s propelled by an off-kilter organ riff. When placed in a vacuum, it’s relatively lighthearted fare; when compared to the original, though, it’s downright dingy. Ruscha takes a crack at a rework with “Afterdub” and winds up with something resembling Meddle-era Pink Floyd, more dissonant and thicker than the original. A bit of manic compression completely replaces the Ruscha’s voice and levitates to teeth-mashing heights before, like the original, it dissolves into nothingness. Most of Secret Circuit’s previous work packed a bit more of a punch than “Afterlife,” and so with the aforementioned album forthcoming, it’ll be interesting to keep an eye on whether he continues his untethered trajectory.