Solars – A Fading Future
Solars – A Fading Future
Self-Released
06/09/2024
Running Time: 38.08
Review by Oli Gonzalez
5/10
Solars. The instrumental post-rock act from the Midlands are on the eve of their latest record, “A Fading Future”. Now, I’ve been fortunate enough to see some of the finest artists in the genre at the very recent addition of ArcTanGent. Including Outrun The Sunlight, Caspian, and Explosions In The Sky. Bands I was curious to see if any of their influences would be apparent in Solars’ sound.
Proceedings kick off with a seemingly out of place Sir David Attenborough voiceover, until after almost a minute, I learned that this introduces the concept of the Holocene, which is also the title of the first track. Now, once the music begins, I have to confess that the production values made for some very uneasy listening. Not the squeaky clean high standards you’d expect from a post-rock band. Instead, it felt rushed, muddy, and just generally low quality. I thought “this is going to a long listen”. Whether my ears adjusted or whether this improved, I managed to see the album and the band’s style is actually all about. Things started to pick up during ‘A Hill To Die Upon’. Here, it’s clear that there’s no canonical cookie cutter approaches to compositional. No, there’s an undeniably deep layer of complexity and texture to the sound, where originality and innovation are key, with ideas constantly progressing and the artists constantly challenging themselves.
I found the guitars in ‘Inertia’ rather interesting, with a mix of more delicate and aesthetically pleasing passages interluding with some more subtly distorted guitars laying down the rhythms. It’s just a shame I couldn’t enjoy them as the drums were far too overpowering, especially the snare constantly bursting through to the foreground where it shouldn’t be trying to be the main character, much like your neighbour from hell who decides to perform some DIY at 7.30 on a Saturday morning! That pretty sums up the record for me; it’s hard to really enjoy it when the production is so poor quality. Please Solars, address this on your next recording! Don’t let this hinder what could be a very promising project.
TRACKLISTING:
01. Holocene
02. Retrograde
03. Doomscrolling
04. A Fading Future
05. A Hill To Die On
06. Inertia
07. Ablation
LINKS:
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