Solar Bears, live at The Button Factory

Solar Bears’ 2010 debut, She Was Coloured In, had a woozy, Instragram-y charm, all blissful beats and drone-pop nostalgia. For this year’s Supermigration, the Dublin-Wicklow duo widen their influences, with tips of the hat towards Vangelis and Air (Moon Safari vocalist Beth Hirsch pops up on the standout ‘Our Future Is Underground’).  Of course, when it comes to electronica, what can feel eerie and transcendent on record is often rendered more clinical in the flesh. Whatever else they have going for them, Solar Bears will never be mistaken for natural born showmen and you wonder, playing one of the largest headliners of their career, if they have the presence to pull it off. 

Rather than lean in, they’ve decided to step back and let their largely instrumental repertoire speak for itself. Crouched behind piles of kit, they look deeply serious – it’s an image that goes all the way back to Kraftwerk performing in lab coats, but they really do resemble technicians manning a bank of machinery. Fortunately, the music has more than enough personality of its own. The neon-splashed ‘A Sky Darkly’ conjures Bladerunner future shock visions; there’s a whiff of Jean Michel Jarre about the chilly euro-funk of ‘Happiness Is A Warm Spacestation’.

The sense that Solar Bears are conjuring a soundtrack to a movie whirring in their own heads is reinforced by ‘The Girl That Played With Lights’, a swooning, glistening piece upholstered with guitars so that it sounds like Joy Division collaborating with Jan Hammer. There’s a treat too – Keep Shelley and Athens’ Sarah P comes on to do vocals on ‘Our Future...’ and ‘Alpha People’ a divine cherry on top of a superlative evening...