Vinyl Never Forgets - Sundays are for looking back

Astralia – Solstice

Released: 22 – 04 – 2017

Vinyl released through: Aloud Music & A Thousand Arms

This week’s album to look back on hails from La Floresta, Barcelona, and it’s a beauty! Astralia’s Solstice is an exercise in perfectly balancing patience with vast open atmospherics. It’s a record that draws its strength from the spaces it leaves unfilled as much as it does from the broad sound it crafts. Each track unfolds with deliberate grace and understated grandeur, as lush guitar melodies glide over soft waves of reverb, as understated rhythms pulse just beneath the surface.

The compositions feel less like your traditional song template, but more like an evolving landscape. Rather than rushing toward dramatic climaxes, Solstice lingers in transition, sharing glimpses of its nuanced beauty which can only be found somewhere in the in-between. This kind of restraint makes those rare swells of sound feel all the more earned, and all the more appreciated.

When comparing this album to another, I always tend to lean towards one of my favorite albums ever, Solace, from Jakob. For me, they somehow stand as kindred works in the post-rock tradition. Where Solace leans into a weighty, almost tidal ebb and flow with its deep swells, coming at you in waves, Solstice feels lighter and more subtle as if carried by a warm breeze across an open landscape. To put it another way, Solace can feel like the closing of an evening, with its sound steeped in dusk and reflection, while Solstice leans toward the golden light of morning and the hope of a glorious day.  Either way, at the end of the day, they both share the mastery of restraint, and they both harbour the gift of crafting crescendos that feel inevitable yet unforced.

In its own, understated way, Astralia’s Solstice feels timeless. It’s an album that doesn’t demand your undivided attention because it has this gift of slowly and gradually enveloping you, leaving your head in a place that’s softer and quieter than where it began.

Solstice | Astralia