ERIK WØLLO: "Solastalgia 1"

From the album "SOLASTALGIA" by Erik Wøllo. Released October 18, 2024 on Projekt Records.

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Erik Wøllo’s SOLASTALGIA is a monumental two-hour double CD of expansive, entrancing electronic music. Utilizing the striking, elegant vocabulary Wøllo has honed over 53 previous releases, his is a melodic vision of ambient electronics with lush arrangements brimming with promise. The 21 tracks display dazzling rhythmic pulses, shimmering textures and memorable ethereal lines.

This beauty is in service of a deeper story. "Solastalgia" — a term coined by Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht — combines the Latin word for “comfort” and the Greek root for “pain, suffering, grief.” It describes the homesickness you experience when still at home as your environment undergoes significant change or degradation due to ecological damage and the loss of a connection to the natural world.

Erik reflects on this, “Being an artist in our time, it is impossible not to be affected by the big issues we face on our planet. Naturally, these matters will somehow influence the music I make. Every road we travel, every house we see, has resulted in a loss of our original ecosystems. For every computer, for every car or every new shirt, producing these has most probably erased areas of untouched wilderness. This is the paradox the term ‘Solastalgia' addresses: the sadness and distress caused by awareness of the way we humans alter and destroy the earth to expand our lifestyle. In order to exist in the technologic world, we ravage our natural surroundings.

“These thoughts go back a long way in my mind, all the way back to childhood when my father chopped down a big area of trees on our farm to make a field for the cows. I played often in this forest. I felt very sad when it was gone — forever altered. Ravaging our surroundings is not sustainable, we need to change. But how? Another big paradox. I love my computer and my gear with which I produce my music; I like to have a car to go anywhere I want. And my house and a garden? Again a big paradox.

“For this album I imagined I was scoring a documentary film about threatened ecosystems. We venture into areas where damage has occurred. We see landscapes forever changed. We see how it originally was and how it has become today. There is a huge amount of nostalgia and sadness reflected in the music. I do not have solutions for this, and I do not want to be political about it. I am describing it. Uncovering something that perhaps few think about in their daily life.”

Guiding the listener through rhythmic sequencer-based sections interspersed with misty ambient zones and soaring electric guitar textures, SOLASTALGIA forms a many-faceted opus. This is music with an evocative and symbolic approach building upon several of Wøllo’s previous albums, in particular GATEWAY (2010) and his only previous studio 2CD release, DIFFERENT SPACES (2017). Pulsing measured momentum moves through the morphing patterns and structures with intricate and passionate storytelling arrangements throughout. Disc 2 ends the poetic vision with “Natural Habitat,” featuring bird sounds recorded at Wøllo’s cottage where he makes most of his music.

SOLASTALGIA is a poignant and powerful album, a rich embroidery of emotional beauty and dynamic energy. This double album’s shining synthesizers, atmospheric pads, subtle textures, consonant chords, and tender melodic phrasing highlights the existential issue of our time. 


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