Sol

Apollo Records is proud to present SOL the highly anticipated second album from Los Angeles based producer / composer Eskmo AKA Brendan Angelides. Inspired by our life giving planetary body, SOL is a masterful meditation on human emotional plane as effected by planetary bodies. Angelides has delivered perhaps his strongest musical statement yet. He explains: My urge was to create an album who's main characters were the Sun, Moon and Earth and how they all play a roll in the perfect simple life of a perfectly imperfect human. Each track within their peak's and valley's plays a specific role in the narrative. My last album was more monotone, sound design focused and emotionally protected. I strove for more on this one. Written, produced and recorded over the course of a year on the Eastside of Los Angeles in his home studio, SOL's epic grandeur bears the traces of Angelides's recent work composing orchestral pieces for live performance with the LA based Echo Society. It weaves in the dulcet tones of a live string ensemble into the many textured layers of some compositions, as well as field recordings from locations across the US: LA, Redwood groves in Northern California, Yosemite and perhaps most memorably, in Costa Rica during a 7 day medicinal retreat. That pivotal retreat as well as a trip to the pyramids and temples of Cairo Egypt, a 10 day silent meditation retreat in the desert of Joshua Tree and a handful of Native American ceremonies shaped the celestial-meets-earth tone of the work. The intimacy and heartfelt qualities of SOL immediately call to mind contemporaries such as Jon Hopkins, Apparat and Matthew Dear as well as the historic likes of early Peter Gabriel, Arthur Russell and Fred Frith amongst others. From the moody cinematic opening of 'SpVce' and exhaling synth melodies of 'Combustion', to the touching delicacy of the watery ballad 'Blue And Grey' to 'Mind of War's tromping existential digi-funk, the heartbreaking piano paen of 'Tamara', to the snarling drone saturation of the title track, to the beaming, epic euphoria of 'The Sun Is a Drum' it's clear that this is a record that is a truly cinematic experience.