Trance Family Lebanon
It’s been seven years – and some long ones at that – since Solarstone last designed and constructed an ‘Electronic Architecture’. While ‘EAs’ 1 thru ‘3′ maintained a regular release pulse, with each year that followed 2014, the series’ absence has been felt ever more acutely.
Whilst never down to one factor, Pure Trance’s capturing of the scene’s zeitgeist, and the unchecked success that followed played no small part. Like ‘island’ (last year’s out-of-nowhere Solarstone LP), its return though is down to something far more appreciable. The last twelve months have brought a step-change in electronic music needs and with ‘Pure Trance’ receiving a well-earned mix-sabbatical last autumn, it’s allowed the cultural time, space, and climate for something many had consigned to Solarstone legacy.
Aside from the pulsingly positive multi-coloured lights that emanate from within its cube, the ‘Arthitecture’ of the fourth ‘Architecture’ is visibly more brutalist & current-day resonant than its predecessors. Its musical remit though remains timelessly unchanged. Tonally & thematically, ‘EA4’ owns the equidistant middleground between the ‘Northern Exposure’ and ‘Renaissance’ albums. Never seeing the electronica-extremes of the former, nor quite as floor-intense as the latter, their progressivism hits the perfect median between.
Despite being offered as a physical item (how could something this beautiful not!), digitally ‘Electronic Architecture 4’ has been devised as a start-through-finish listening experience. The new nonpareil of the kick-back-‘n-musically-trip encounter, its soundscape has few – if any – modern parallels.
