Album
Modern Retroism
Modern Retroism is an instrumental science-fiction concept album inspired by early electronic music, modern production, and the mystery surrounding Area 51.
Release date: September 6, 2025
In stock
Album introduction
Modern Retroism is an instrumental science-fiction concept album inspired by early electronic music, modern production, and the mystery surrounding Area 51. Its ten tracks form a continuous but largely undefined story, allowing listeners to create their own interpretation before the closing moments reveal that it was all a dream.
Track listing
About this release
About Modern Retroism
Released only 120 days after Something a Little Different, Modern Retroism marked a sharp change in direction for Jamie Penner. “Synchronize” and “Lost at Groom Lake” were written after the previous album had been completed but before it was released. Because the new material belonged to an entirely different musical world, Penner developed it into a full album rather than leaving it on the shelf.
The result is a fully instrumental concept album built as one continuous, silent narrative. Its broad premise follows someone being drawn toward Area 51, becoming trapped there, and moving through an increasingly strange sequence of events. The music and track titles provide the framework, but listeners are invited to imagine the details for themselves.
The electronic foundation was inspired in part by Jean-Michel Jarre’s early albums Oxygène and Équinoxe. Their synthesizer sounds fascinated Penner decades before he had access to create with them. The “retro” comes from that influence, while the “modern” reflects his own compositions, production, guitar sensibility, and science-fiction story.
The final track uses waves recorded by Penner at Stories Beach on Vancouver Island. After a calm return to reality, a bedside alarm reveals that the entire journey was a dream. Many listeners later described the album as a favourite for relaxation, easing anxiety, and finding a peaceful mood.
Track notes
Inside the tracks
01Synchronize
The opening stage of the album’s journey, establishing its electronic language and sense of technological preparation. It was one of the first two pieces written and helped define the direction of the album that followed.
02Transit In
A transitional movement into the album’s central environment. Its meaning is intentionally left open, allowing the listener to decide what is travelling, where it is going, and what awaits it.
03Transit Out
A brief narrative bridge that continues the movement established in “Transit In” and carries the story toward Groom Lake.
04Lost at Groom Lake
One of the album’s earliest compositions and a central piece in its Area 51 concept. The accompanying music video was filmed along Groom Lake Road to the facility’s front gate.
05Broadcast
A signal within the story, though its source, recipient, and meaning are deliberately undefined.
06Under the Stars
The album’s longest composition and one of its most expansive passages, creating space for the listener’s own version of the story to unfold.
07Dirty
A darker and rougher shift in texture that changes the mood of the journey without assigning a fixed event or explanation to it.
08Escape
A more urgent stage in the narrative. What is escaping, and what it is escaping from, remains for the listener to decide.
09Arrival
The journey approaches its conclusion, though the destination is not explicitly identified.
10Awaken at Stories Beach
A calm return to reality built around waves Penner recorded at Stories Beach on Vancouver Island on August 16, 2025. In the final seconds, a bedside alarm reveals that the album’s entire journey was a dream.