Skare are a sound collaboration by Mathias Josefson and Per Åhlund with visuals performed by Fredrik Olofsson. In that the visuals are a ‘band member’ is no real surprise given the content of stark ambient scapes incorporating field recordings, abstracted instruments, found sound and electronic manipulations. Visuals would both aid Sakre both as a descriptive device as well as captivate the eye of the viewer while the long treatments are in play. The album itself is a narrative of an imagined journey into unknown territory, a movement beyond the city into nature described by a sense of ‘frozen ambience’.
Segmented in three parts Solstice City begins with the short To the other shore which gently builds an imminent brooding atmosphere before introducing field recordings of city and departure to build the context for the journey beyond. The second track, Through Wind and Broken Ice, continues the journey with the insistent frozen footfall and dark undertones, broken by bird into a more intricate description of the landscape and passage through tundra using the melancholic and unfamiliar nature of the altered tonal expectations to conjure up ice winds in frozen tundra. With the arrival of piano sketches towards the end of this long track arrives the movement into a constructed environment setting the scene for track three, The Snow Angel Factory. Here glistening tones, bristle with static and mechanistic industrial pristine sounds. Intercom moments and the hum and pulse of imagined machinery build a sonic impression which moves through phases of differing intensity.
Overall Solstice City is an accomplished take on the aspects of a bleak ambient landscape often referred to as ‘dark’ or industrial or here as frozen or glacial ambient as per the focus of the label. While the sound is constructed as ‘uninviting’ it is purposefully so. Best listened to through headphones and without the demand for music as a form of diversion.
Innerversitysound
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