Solarstone Breathes Life Back into ‘Electronic Architecture’ with Number 4

For most avid trance and progressive lovers it has been a while since beloved veteran Solarstone has last dropped a new Electronic Architecture (EA). Now after seven years, finally the master designed and constructed a new episode in the IDMA-nominated Electronic Architecture series. While the numbers 1 through 3 maintained a regular release pulse, the series’ absence has been felt evermore acutely.

With this fourth installment of Architecture, Solarstone is visibly more brutalist and current-day resonant than its predecessors. Its musical remit though remains timelessly unchanged. Tonally and thematically, it owns the equidistant middle ground 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 modern parallels.

The musical backbone of this new release is made up of creatives who’ve cut their teeth on previous Solarstone projects and new talent, freshly recruited to its ranks. In regard to the former, new music resounds from the likes of Lostly, Basil O’Glue, Stoneface & Terminal, Super-Frog Saves Tokyo, Forerunners, Nick Silvestri and others. To its new-talent-latter meanwhile, Solarstone has gone further than ever before in uncovering it. As well as welcoming an influx of new music through the front door, he scored the internet’s forum-highways & Bandcamp-byways in search of promise. When he found it – even in its most embryonic form, no effort was spared to cultivate it for EA4. Case in point, “Equilibrium” the album’s penultimate track. Nominally a one-minute software demo from technologist Dreams Of Wires, Solarstone worked with just the briefest of melody ideas to bring Dreams his first fully realized production.

Whilst on its comeback-track, Electronic Architecture experienced more than its fair share of star-aligning moments. Halfway into production, regular Solarstone collaborator Alucard announced the end of his retirement by dropping an album’s worth of material into EA’s demo box – several of which found their way into its mix. Richard also stumbled across a twelve-year-old ‘lost-tape’ track from Vincent Lewis (who – fact-fans – went on to direct Solarstone’s “Electric Love” video). In essence a musical time capsule dating back to EA’s most embryonic times, “Pulse Train” became part of the album’s opening stages. “We’re Descending” – Lostly’s stunning latest – arrived within hours of Rich needing something to further a moodier tranche, whilst opening track “Lament” by Super-Frog Saves Tokyo’s landed a day after the project commenced. In timely fashion the album also hosts new Solarstone production “Pale Blue Dot,” his & Orkidea’s sixth “Slowmotion” and Kryder’s desk-hot remix of ‘island’s “When I Dream.”

Key as ever to Electronic Architecture’s constitution are Solarstone’s own reconstructions. Eleven of which are featured on this album. Not remixes, re-edits or re-imaginings exactly, they are versions that bring incredible tracks into line with the series’ sonic ethic.

“Electronic Architecture 4” Tracklist:
01. Super-Frog Saves Tokyo – Lament
02. Nick Silvestri – Little Things
03. Vincent Lewis – Pulse Train
04. Xabiso – Children of the Night (Reconstruction)
05. Andrei Zinca – Wildflower (Reconstruction)
06. V-Ti – Space Dogs (Reconstruction)
07. Passive Progressive ft. Sentient Mullet – Fluke (Reconstruction)
08. Forerunners – Sunreturn
09. Solarstone – When I Dream (Kryder Remix)
10. Basil O’Glue & Nomas – Untold
11. Solarstone & Bill McGruddy – Take Me On Your Flight (Acapella)
12. DISCO19 – Sea of Stars (Reconstruction)
13. Solarstone – Pale Blue Dot
14. Lostly – We’re Descending (Reconstruction)
15. Solarstone & Orkidea – Slowmotion VI
16. Coredata – 94 (Reconstruction)
17. MK8 – Breathe
18. Men-D – Dropped By The Gods (Reconstruction)
19. Stowers & Cooper ft Brooke Woods – Shattered Skies (Acapella)
20. Alucard – Midway
21. Gary Afterlife – Wavering Light (Reconstruction)
22. ZOYA – Bright Star (Reconstruction)
23. Shadow Realm – Other Side of the Sky
24. Martin LeBlanc – Lagom
25. Glynn Alan – Limitless
26. Super-Frog Saves Tokyo – Kyoto (Reconstruction)
27. Macker – Lost In Space (Simon Bostock Remix)
28. Stoneface & Terminal – Lose My Need (Reconstruction)
29. Solarstone & Dreams of Wires – Equilibrium
30. Alucard – Phoenix