Solar Bears: Supermigration

In this business, you get to hear a tonne of albums, possibly even literally if you’ve been doing it long enough. You hear joyful albums (see Bobby McFerrin’s Simple Pleasures, tUnE-yArDs’ W H O K I L L or anything by Mika), melancholy albums (see Moby’s Wait For Me, Noah & The Whale’s The First Days Of Spring or anything by Radiohead 1993 to 2007, 2011 to present), and terribly confused albums that don’t seem to know where they fall on the happy-sad spectrum (see LCD Soundsystem’s Sound Of Silver, Drake’s Take Care, or anything by Cheryl Cole).

It’s a really rare and special day when you get to hear an album that’s joyful and melancholy at the same time, that expertly treads a line between happy and sad.
Supermigration, the second LP from Dublin/Wicklow duo Solar Bears, does this with dazzling electronic simplicity. I’m guessing that they focused on creating terrific, subtle, melodic, beat-led instrumental electronica, with the irregular inclusion of a few female voices. Fellow Planet Mu signee Sarah P of Greek duo Keep Shelly In Athens and Air collaborator Beth Hirsch add striking verses to ‘Alpha People’ and ‘Our Future Is Underground’ respectively, leaving haunting synth melodies to take care of the choruses, while a Bulgarian women’s choir turns up amid the high romance of groove-led slow jam ‘Love Is All’.
The marriage of the merry to the mournful is not the only welcome contradiction on Supermigration. Glossy, forceful numbers like the simply huge ‘Cosmic Runner’ have plenty in common with dynamic ‘80s pop anthems, while the gently meandering ‘You & Me (Subterranean Cycles)’ feels more like the soundtrack to a trippy nature documentary. The spookily industrial ‘Komplex’ and epic closer ‘Rainbow Collision’, too, are boldly cinematic.
A deeply provocative mix of digital euphoria and bittersweet instrumentals, Supermigration will struggle to satisfy the attention spans of some music lovers, but then, that’s true of many pieces of music under 140 BPM in the Auto-Tune age. This thoroughly charmed listener can only hope that for every potential fan its economical arrangements scare off, two doting fanatics sprout in his place.

Key Track: ‘Cosmic Runner’