Solarstone: “. — — — —” Review
Since I started shoving my hands into buckets of club music in 2013, one thing that has consistently interested me is the way in which genres are defined through cultural appropriation, technical constrictions, and simply through the actions made by those that stand as a representation of the genre. While deep house is commonly looked at as the club music that runs between 110–124 BPM and uses hi-hats for highs and bass grooves for lows, these days it’s labeled by club music circuits and publishers as the music that has synchronized piano and bass stabs working on a more house-based rhythm. Is this bad? No. Could it be? Positively. I’m a big fan of conceptually exploring what a genre or mix really could do outside of the ways society views it and the ways industry has nailed it. But that also means oftentimes as a genre shifts and adapts there’s the risk of many losing an understanding of where the genre came from, especially to newcomers.
And then you have Solarstone. Much like BT, Paul Oakenfold, and others from the era of the 90s trance explosion, Solarstone was there and involved in the music at the time. But instead of continuing to do the same thing in great ways like Giuseppe Ottaviani or creating tools and sounds that influence new generations to create new concepts like BT, Solarstone is humbly sitting on top of his label “Pure Trance” and watching the world of music continue to change around him. Solarstone and his label ensure that some sort of a landmark exists so that the sound of trance is preserved. While the Pure Trance label doesn’t exactly consecrate the actual sound of 90s trance due (because trance back then borrowed from techno a bit and also club music sounded differently due to the technology of the era) the label manages to maintain sounds that have defined trance since the mid 2000s. For a label that’s been releasing tracks and EPs since the big-room bubble of 2013 ended, this is something respectful amidst an industry that’s been chasing trends so hard it trips over the insane success of Martin Garrix’s “Animals” and suddenly builds 1,000 “Animals” sound-a-likes, influencing and affecting the way trance and other genres were looked at.
Outside his curation, Solarstone’s own music has been something that has stayed remarkably true to roots for well over 10 years at this point while maintaining freshness and variety throughout. The BPM has stayed between 132 and 138. The “pure” mixes have remained colorful, fast, and uplifting. And Solarstone’s collaboration project with Giuseppe Ottaviani, PureNRG, is quite something. So is Solarstone’s most recent album/EP/thing. Titled “1” in morse code, this 8-track journey is maybe my favorite trance album in a couple years. Above & Beyond hasn’t topped their monumental “Group Therapy” since 2011, Ferry Corsten’s array of works are good but outside of “L.E.F.” in 2006 haven’t been anything to aspire to, and Boom Jinx and Vintage & Morelli’s two debut albums are both wonderful genre journeys and colorful well-mastered experiences. But nothing has really touched the bigger, pad-filled trance album sounds this well in too long. Since pre-2013’s big room bubble if you ask me. And, interestingly enough, Solarstone manages to do this in a very humble way while exploring new territory for trance in a very simple way: He slows it down.
Slowing down the BPM and focusing on the transcendent, uplifting aspect of the music is something I’ve always found interesting to the trance genre. LTN’s 2015 album “People I’ll Never Forget” explores this wonderfully on tracks like “Let Me Go” and “Hold on to Your Heart” but can be easily mistaken for deep house thanks to the highly reduced speed of the music. Solarstone foundationally built this music somewhere around the 128–132 realm, making sure the bass and kicks aren’t produced with too much of a presence on a mainstage. I’m sure many of these tracks will work great live but they aren’t built with lots of reverb or echo in mind. Instead they sound good in headphones and in more intimate settings, giving a moderate amount of depth and distance. One could say these tracks are borrowing a little too much from the realm of progressive house except for the fact that Solarstone is a trance musician. His understanding of piano-based moods, melodies, and the all-important “crescendo” is as well versed as the people he has worked with for over 20 years now. The result is an album of slower-moving trance mood pieces that manage to be uplifting in nature but are ponderous and come from potentially dark places.
And it’d be one good thing to have a trance album built out of ponderous moods and dark places, but it’s a couple things more when you consider the conceptual overcast the album has, its individual tracks, and the works it winds up comparing against in ways. Morse code is “an alphabet or code in which letters are represented by combinations of long and short signals of light or sound.” (thanks, Google) The album and promotional singles use morse code as the title cards, reasoning that sound and light are the medium used for communication of something else. It’s not anything complex aside from maybe the idea that Solarstone, like anyone’s, work requires some time and dedication to understand. The pink background and white highlights provide a great backdrop for Solarstone’s “colorful” choices of instrumentation over the years. But whether or not a slower-paced trance album will take with a man who has pushed and promoted traditionalism for nearly a decade is a tough gamble. This may be why, when given time and dedication to decode the man’s interests and desires to express, the album’s beauty can be decoded and read. Solarstone opens the misty album space proper and plays a sample on the first track that states, “Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith first…the trust part comes later.” Don’t worry, this album may start on unnatural ground for purists that think trance starts at 138 BPM, but Solarstone is here to show us that trance can exist in all shapes and sizes. Just trust him.
And it’s extremely worth it. “Eclipse” is resonant and humble. “Choosing His Angels” with Alex Karweit is poppy and maybe uses a little too much processing on the vocals but reminds me of wonderful trance anthems like Going Wrong, On My Way to Heaven, and Love Will Bring it All Around. Slowmotion IV borrows the techy origins trance had back in the 90s for a bigger push into the album’s later half. A State of Mind is the big show-stopping climax but final track Cafune’s break-beat denouement is beautiful and eerie all at once if you listen closely. While listening to this album the biggest influential draw I kept hearing was in fact Armin van Buuren’s 2008 magnum opus “Imagine”. The transcendent design is there while there’s an undercurrent of something morose and broken, falling apart. It’s hard not to see the similarities. But unlike that bombastic guitar-tinged mega-hit, this album has no interest in being larger than life and having the most epic trance album intro of all time. Solarstone’s “. — — — — “ is here to exist, do what it does really well, and then be on its way in less than an hour. And that’s quite the feat when most trance albums intend to pack the full hour and fifteen minutes onto a CD, showing off every single imaginable that’ll be released with remixes for the next year or two. No extra fat here. This is a lean and to the point experience, but none of the tracks are horribly undercut in their establishment, growth, and crescendo.
It’s possible this is the first of a few EPs, leading us into “2” and “3” from Solarstone. And to be honest, I wouldn’t refuse more of what I’ve heard already but I certainly would hope Solarstone is looking to explore more avenues in his next big release if not enjoy giving this album more exposure with remixes and a tour. The trance genre is certainly deserving of more experiments and unique albums like “. — — — — “ from Solarstone. And it’s very much worth my time and money. Maybe even yours.
