BARING the complexities of modern-day love stories, Sam Lopez gets a millennial crowd grooving to a blend of 80s synth pop with his band, Lost Spaces.
First dropping fake.guitars in 2018, the band will be following up its eight released singles, including boxset.girlfriend, disco.haze, and fun.noise, with a full-fledged album no-vacancy on Aug 9.
The album comments on the idea of love without being romantic, nor does it fall on the other end of the spectrum, “which is heartbreak”, says Lopez.
“I don’t romanticise love in this album, neither do I say scr*w it – okay, maybe I do say scr*w it a bit more, meaning, I’m a bit more pessimistic towards love,” says the Lost Spaces lead vocalist in a recent interview.
Lopez adds: “From my point of view, it’s more of what we have become as human beings trying to find love.”
Together with keyboardist Lim Hong Koon, bassist Imran Marshall, drummer Kyle Emmanuel and guitarist Lim Yi Shien, Lopez will be leading the band on the 2019 Good Vibes Festival stage at The Ranch in Gohtong Jaya, on July 20 and 21.
Lost Spaces started as a family affair.
In 2016, Lopez first roped in his cousin Imran and brother Lukas (who played drums), before forming Lost Spaces in 2017.
Eventually, the band evolved to its current line-up, and they have been playing together since last year.
When you’re listening to a Lost Spaces song, “you’re listening to my life, essentially”, Lopez says with a laugh, adding “the songwriting with the general vibe, the direction ...
“But all the production stuff, that’s a big team effort from (Hong) Koon [because] he produced as well, in our band.”
Studio time is usually down to Lopez, Hong Koon and mixing engineer Afnan Rahman – the band’s “main guy” known by his producer tag Chief.
Whenever a song needs sonic components from other band members, they’ll come in to contribute parts, like in fun.noise, which frontman Lopez was partly inspired to write after watching Netflix series Love, Death & Robots.
“Kyle’s drumming on that – that’s live drums by the way –everyone seems to think it’s electronic drums but we tracked it and made it sound robotic just for the song.”
Besides Chief, producers who’ve worked on the album include Kenzo Yeo a.k.a crydancecry, and New York-based JAIE (real name Chelsea Chan).
The demo for fun.noise was initially made by Hong Koon and Yeo, who were bandmates prior to the keyboardist joining Lost Spaces. It was offered to Lopez who added new lyrics to it.
Hong Koon says: “I was initially precious about it. I met Kenzo back when I was in high school and we were already working on music together.
“That was one of our old songs that we’ve made but we just never put it out, so we brought it to Lost Spaces.”
On top of a set list that includes Lost Spaces’ latest releases like slow.dance, the band will also be playing its upcoming album’s lead single bad.motel for the first time live.
“That’s one of the songs that we’re going to introduce to the world,” says Lopez adding that when writing the track, “the perfectionist in me came out a bit more”.
All the songs in the album will be “genre fluid as possible” with each song speaking for itself as part of the overall story, Lopez elaborates.
While “80%” of the album is going to make people get up and groove, both Lopez and Hong Koon say not all songs share the same vibe.
“There are going to be some songs that are slightly more heart-wrenching, to a certain extent,” says Lopez, adding that at the end of the day, “we just want to capture a vibe”.
“We want people to groove to the music. We want people to take something away, whether it was a lesson on love or [an] observation of the human condition, and whether people relate to that or okay, nah.”
To Lopez, his music “is just all very subjective but very personal at the same time. It’s like my life’s story there”.
