AmbientMusicGuide.com - Solar Fields

While the superb Fahrenheit Project compilations define Ultimae Records as a label overall, artists like Magnus Birgersson aka Solar Fields are the individual artists who standout. His specialty is the panoramic ambient trance the label is famous for and there's a picturesque quality to his music that is distinctively his own.

Stylistically, Blue Moon Station and Leaving Home cover between them his entire range of downtempo sounds and they also remain the best Solar Fields releases to date.

Blue Moon Station is his most dynamic of the two. Opening with the echoing synth chords and tentative bass notes of "Confusion Illusion" the album peaks in tempo about half way through with the urgent pulse of "Infection 268", a piece of straight-ahead 4/4 deep progressive trance. There's also moments of tribal percussion, gorgeous jangling guitars ("Elevator Sunshine Girl") and lots of multi-layered synth lines weaving in and out of the mix. The environmental abstraction of the album's second half is surprising, and engaging too if you let go of any expectations of what an Ultimae release should sound like. "Planet Zoo", for example, perfectly captures eerie stillness of a forest punctuated by flashes of sound and movement.

Leaving Home unimpressed me on its release in 2005, seemingly too airy and insubstantial. But it's not; it's just that the album is not the expected follow-up to Blue Moon Station and may demand more listens to appreciate the subtle, quiet depths of its first half. On these early tracks the rhythms often skim and flicker across the surface of the music rather than anchor it. Further in, the music acquires a more defined structure and Birgersson conjures two flat-out masterpieces. "Air Song" is a profoundly soulful piece of electronica. Snatches of guitar, voice, sitar and piano embellish a brilliantly simple 4-note bass phrase, and swirling around it's lumbering rhythm is a sense of space as beautiful and infinite and a cloudless blue sky. This segues straight into "Cocoon Moon (Glastonbury mix)", an extraordinary piece of musical voodoo that marries ambient trance to a slow, hypnotic rock beat. Harmonically rich, full of space and with a touch of darkness, this track particularly rewards playback at loud volume.

HOME