Psychedelic rock has long ceased to be a monolithic genre. For decades, musicians have been trying to find those very coordinates where hallucinogenic textures meet industrial harshness, where cosmic ambiences give way to urban anxiety. Trans Atlantic J. seemingly ignored these searches, building their own coordinate system. The EP Circus is a conceptual statement about circus art that paradoxically sounds like anything but a circus performance. Expecting carnivalesque theatricality or deliberate exhibitionism? No. Instead—five songs, each functioning as an independent sound installation, where psychedelia becomes merely a starting point for a much more complex conversation.

The EP grows from that particular branch of psychedelic rock where bass lines define the architecture of the composition. Trans Atlantic J. builds hypnotic bass lines around which all other sonic space crystallizes. Indie-dance, which served as inspiration for the project, is present here more as an idea of movement, as a concept of pulse, rather than as a direct genre influence. The creative atmosphere of different cities that seeped into the EP transformed into an electric charge, into a particular tension between stasis and dynamics. Circus is about inverted psychedelia—psychedelia that refuses soft acoustic journeys in favor of metallic surfaces, neon reflections, and icy sunsets over technological landscapes.

photo by Nanne Spielmann

If traditional psychedelia promises dissolution and transcendence, Circus offers a different experience—the experience of electrified presence in the moment when the dream of space travel collides with the reality of urban space. This is music for those tired of comfortable penthouses but who understand that space begins right here, at the intersection of concrete highways and digital horizons.

New Air The opening track unfolds as an electronic trail saturated with a barely perceptible Middle Eastern accent—Egyptian motifs are present here like the smell of spices in scorching air. Psychedelia hovers over an imaginary desert, where insistent repetitions drown in the trembling haze of guitar parts. Electric guitars burst in with unexpected flashes of lightning, illuminating clouds that seem simultaneously distant and tangible.

Listening to New Air, you feel exactly this—the air of sunset over the desert, where acoustics become an almost physical substance. Icy calm contrasts with the scorching landscape, creating effects that are difficult to remain indifferent to.

In Strong Drums come crashing down first, followed by sharp guitars that cast psychedelia somewhere to the periphery of the composition. The melody still flutters somewhere in the depths of this electric power, but leadership unequivocally belongs to the guitar parts. Rock here acquires an insistent dance character, an accelerated pulse that destroys clouds of dreaminess and illusions. Strong is a real power station, behind which the contours of a high-tech city emerge.

Bucket proves even more insistent. Guitars attack from the first chords but soon retreat, giving way to acoustic effects, leaving the flashing lights somewhere in the past. A blockbuster sensation emerges, where you’re behind the wheel of a superhero’s car, having escaped pursuers and now enjoying the lights of a giant shopping mall.

Versatile Insistence, lightness, multifaceted nature—Versatile embodies all of this simultaneously. Melodies layer over each other, creating a complex acoustic effect. One insistently declares itself, others sing along, giving birth to controlled musical chaos. The chaos changes, moves forward, hovers in the air, but here one cannot speak of lightness. The chaos transforms into insistent electric air, heated before approaching storm clouds. Tension builds, then breaks off suddenly.

Loose The final track flares up as a bright cluster of psychedelic energy surrounded by metallic flashes—like a huge scorching planet of neon-crimson color suddenly appearing in space. Cosmic echoes of guitars dominate, leaving other instruments in the background, but then synthesizer psychedelia explodes with scorching air and electric tornadoes in an unfamiliar atmosphere. The cluster of electric energy continues to pulsate, as if the gravitational force of an unfamiliar planet proves powerless before this might.

Circus by Trans Atlantic J. turns out to be a cosmic, rock-oriented EP overflowing with electric air. This is a journey into the world of electronic music and krautrock with bright flashes of neon clouds and scorching air. The EP is deceptive—it seems light at the beginning, but gradually reveals enormous power that by the finale reaches planetary scale.

You can hear that Trans Atlantic J. values restraint, strength, and modernity. Blurred psychedelia borders on the scorching metal of guitars, creating unexpected contrasts. Traditional melodic lines are almost absent here, but it is precisely this feature that penetrates straight to the heart. The record is atmospheric in the sense that industrial landscapes at sunset or neon reflections in puddles after rain are atmospheric.

Trans Atlantic J. refuses comfort and predictability, offering instead an experience that balances between meditativeness and adrenaline, between the stasis of desert air and the dynamics of city lights.

Psychedelia can be cold, industrial, urban—and still retain the ability to transport the listener to other dimensions. It’s just that these dimensions turn out to be closer than they seem, hidden in the folds of everyday technological experience, in the pulsation of urban rhythm, in the reflections of neon signs on wet asphalt. Trans Atlantic J. has found their circus—and it’s a circus of electricity, metal, and cosmic cold.

*This review was made possible by SubmitHub