Nov 3, 2019

Sundaze 1944

Hello, the F1 is having their party at Austin Texas this weekend, alas the relatively new circuit isn't build on really solid land and parts of the circuit already become extremely bumpy, nevermind those driversbums. Qualifying was incredibly close today 1 tenth slower got Leclerc fourth place behind Verstappen and Vettel at 1 hundredth of Bottas. Let's face it, these F1 cars are optimized to perform at the utmost and the 3 different top teams arrive at almost the same point, which defacto let's the drivers make the difference in the race. Hamilton has proven to be best and unlike previous years when he had a far better car, these days on a more level playing field he has learned to maximize his chances very successfully. I wonder why he didn't go all out and satisfying himself with 5th, i guess he's expecting troubles upfront, anyway an eight place is all he needs to get his 6th worldtitle....


Today's artist is the recording alias of Magnus Birgersson, an electronic musician, composer, and sound designer from Gothenburg, Sweden. Birgersson's music spans the genres of ambient, IDM, downtempo, and psy-trance, and he has also composed numerous video game soundtracks, the Swedish electronic music artist is better known by his stage name Solar Fields, As of 2019, he has released eighteen albums, and has also scored all interactive in-game music for the Electronic Arts game Mirror's Edge as well as its sequel, Mirror's Edge Catalyst. His latest album, Origin#03, was released on 1 June 2019.......N-Joy

I expected much more interest in Magnus' work he deserves it, hence i post this Discogs comment here "Wow, I definitely missed the bus on this guy, but in the last couple months, I have become well familiar with his material, and I have to say, it is just epic. Lots of percussive ambient, but with enough atmospheric pads to really flesh out the tracks and give his music a spacey but also emotional quality. Seriously, track after track after track, Solar Fields is just a joy to listen to."

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Gothenburg-based Swedish composer, sound designer, and multi-instrumentalist Magnus Birgersson created Solar Fields in the late 1990s. Birgersson was raised in a musical family and began playing piano and synthesizers in the 1970s. In the mid-1980s he began combining synthesizers with computers. In addition to his ambient work, he has also been a guitar player in rock bands, a pianist in jazz funk bands, and keyboard player in drum and bass bands."

Under the moniker Solar Fields he composed 15 albums and appeared on over 60 various compilations. His first solo release was an ambient album named Reflective Frequencies, released on Ultimae in 2001. This was followed two years later by Blue Moon Station , which also included downtempo and trance, and was designed as a single fluid story.In late 2005, Solar Fields composed Leaving Home and Extended, the latter being a limited edition. His fifth album EarthShine, launched in 2007, featured more upbeat soundscapes blending morning trance, progressive, psychedelic, tribal and ambient music. This up-tempo album was warmly received by the progressive and psytrance scenes. This led to Electronic Arts and DICE commissioning Solar Fields for the in-game score for Mirror's Edge, a first-person action adventure video game released worldwide on November 14, 2008. The soundtrack was included in the VGC's "Top 20 Original Soundtracks in Gaming".

The following year, Solar Fields composed Movements. The album was ranked in the top 10 of best albums by Echoes listeners. The album Movements was also used as the soundtrack for the indie game Capsized from the small Canadian studio Alientrap in 2011. It remains his most popular album to date. In 2010, he used the harmonies and melodies of Movements in a remix album titled Altered - Second Movements and started the Origin series, four albums which aim to present archives and unreleased songs. Until We Meet the Sky and Random Friday were composed in parallel. In 2013, he released the second album in the Origin series, Origin #02.
He released his demo song "Cluster" later that year. His song "Pulse", along with a remix of it by Airwave, was released on June 30, 2014 by Joof Recordings;

 In 2014 Birgersson started his own label, Droneform Records, and released a series of digital compilations featuring updated, remixed, and remastered tracks from his catalog; the albums were titled Red, Green, and Blue. On September 30, 2015, it was confirmed by DICE and Birgersson that he was creating the in-game score of Mirror's Edge: Catalyst, and that he had been working on said score for twelve months as of the aforementioned date. More releases on his own label now Ourdom (2018) followed by a third edition of Origens, Origin#03 (2019)

Magnus has collaborated with Vincent Villuis, a.k.a. AES Dana, on H.U.V.A. Network and T.S.R. in the company of Daniel Segerstad and Johannes Hedberg from Carbon Based Lifeforms.



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" During the last 13 years I have been composing a lot of music for different compilations around the world. I felt that today most of those tracks have fallen into shadow. I decided to collect some of the tracks, make up-to-date mixes and give them a fresh mastering to bring them back to life again. The outcome is 3 albums that are called Red, Green and Blue – the RGB collection. "

Magnus Birgersson



. Solar Fields - RED ( 449mb)

01 Jeezlh 9:14
02 Velvet Reptile 8:58
03 Confusion Illusion 7:27
04 Union Light 7:28
05 Combinations (On/Off Edit) 5:11
06 Fiat Lux 9:19
07 Electric Fluid 6:50
08 Times Are Good (Sometimes Remix) 8:06
09 Compressed Universe (Edit) 6:51
10 OnFlow (Edit) 8:28

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Solar Fields - GREEN (flac 482mb)

01 Level Out 8:55
02 Magic Eye (Remix) 10:02
03 Sol (Remix) 7:30
04 Spiritual Ocean 6:49
05 Levitate 11:23
06 Insum (Remix) 8:17
07 H.U.V.A. Network - Rain Geometry (Solar Fields rmx) 7:51
08 Respiratory Rate 7:50
09 The Sight Is White 7:26
10 Third Time (T Version) 8:16

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Wow, i definitely it is just epic. Lots of percussive ambient, but with enough atmospheric pads to really flesh out the tracks and give his music a spacey but also emotional quality. Seriously, every track has its own heart but all blend together to make a hopeful and vibrant story. . If you haven't already, check out the beautiful aural universe of Solar Fields



Solar Fields - BLUE (flac 494mb)

01 Life 6:37
02 Good Times 7:44
03 Air Song (Remix) 7:54
04 Passage 7:40
05 Water Silence 6:00
06 Blue Moon Station 7:52
07 Small Little Green Cubes 9:47
08 Something Crystal 8:40
09 Filteria - Cloud-Kingdom (Solar Fields Remix) 10:45
10 In Motion (Good Morning Edit) 11:26

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It is safe to say that by now one can firmly expect Solar Fields albums to have impeccable production, delicate care taken in sound design, subtle details in the mix and no self-indulgent technological showing off. Ourdom, is no exception - but apart from the polished technical elements, the musical aspects of the just-under 80-minutes-long album don't let expecting fans down either. In today's collapsing attention span, shrinking to almost a singularity, it is quite uplifting to see an artist trusting us with well-structured, seamlessly flowing long pieces in the vein of the epics by Klaus Schulze. Burning View, the album's opening track, is gently introducing the epic musical adventure with a floating ambience and subtle sonic ornaments. The gradual transition to solemn piano chords in Shifting Nature, then to the anthemic uplift of Into The Sun is a typical and very satisfying Solar Fields construct. One can fully expect to be gradually taken to climaxes like Mountain King and Moving Lines, which are high-octane, but perfectly economically done EDM pieces with imaginative changes and variations.

Tracks like Wave Cascade provide a repose and a chance for introspection between the energetic currents of the aforementioned tracks, and Ourdom is very capable of shifting us between inner states as it does so with musical epochs, too...Joshua's Shop with its ascending playful notes is taking us from electronic ambiences to a classical period, when the first glassy harp-like notes appear... As a delicate, nostalgic and exquisitely economic piece, it again shows how sound design, musical elements and thinking in structures can produce a concise and evocative sonic picture. If one was not convinced by the range of imaginings heard so far, then A Green Walk and Parallel Universe can show us how eminently ambient atmospherics and spacey harmonies can fit in with the more soaring and driven passages of the album. One can appreciate in some perfectly put-together long mixes the way in which different moods and tempos can be combined into a whole sonic journey, the mix becoming greater than the sum of its parts.

However, to state the obvious, here we have original material composed of 13 tracks, each seemingly conceived to be organic parts of the greater unit: just inspect closely the subtle way in which musical elements of a track can reference other sections they build up from or dissolve into... It is a rare treat, and in a rushing world it is perhaps outrageous to strongly emphasise that this album is best enjoyed as a single musical journey - and not track by track. Having said that, each track perfectly functions on its own, and, again, in typical Solar Fields fashion, each is a little electronic gem, on Ourdom, there are no right angles nor sharp edges, only ascending and descending waves and curves...



Solar Fields - Ourdom ( flac   446mb)

01 Burning View 7:28
02 Shifting Nature 2:40
03 Into The Sun 6:40
04 Forgiveness 9:20
05 Mountain King 14:24
06 Wave Cascade 5:04
07 Moving Lines 5:02
08 A Long Tailed Bird Whispered 1:37
09 Joshua's Shop 5:28
10 A Green Walk 1:52
11 Parallel Universe 8:08
12 The Daylight Carrier 6:32
13 Siren Song Of Glass 5:04

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Appreciate the post - thank you