THE OCEAN Announces New Album 'Solaris', Shares 'Light Pollution' Single
Архив новостей | Русская версия
A lot of bands wouldn't have recovered. From 2022 to 2025, post-metal visionaries THE OCEAN lost two-thirds of their members, with the lineup that made fan-favorite albums "Phanerozoic I" (2018),"Phanerozoic II" (2020) and "Holocene" (2023) stripping itself away. After a victorious final bow at Hellfest last year celebrating this lineup that had lasted for over a decade, only founding guitarist, songwriter and lyricist Robin Staps, longtime bassist Mattias Hägerstrand and new drummer Jordi Farré (also of CRIPPLED BLACK PHOENIX) remained.
Those who stayed could easily have called it quits, but instead, they rebuilt with and re-emerged with "Solaris", the most ambitious album of THE OCEAN's 25-year career. A near-70-minute journey to the stars and back, it's based on late Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky's masterpiece of the same name.
The first single from this upcoming album is "Light Pollution", which begins with familiar synth textures that connect seamlessly to its predecessor, "Holocene", before gradually picking up momentum and moving in a different direction. The song culminates in a towering, slow-burning finale of orchestral grandeur, suffocating heaviness, and subdued rhythmic complexity.
"Light Pollution" explores the pitfalls of 21st-century technology and humanity's growing obsession with simulated reality. But do the many technological and social advances of recent decades truly represent progress?
"We've witnessed several communication revolutions throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, but have we actually become any better at communicating?" comments Robin Staps. "Has there really been forward movement, or has the motion been orbital — have we merely been treading water? Light pollution symbolizes the transparency of the postmodern age, permeating everything and everyone. Everything is constantly visible; we've lost the darkness to hide in, and with the relentless glare of communication, we've also lost our privacy."
For the music video for "Light Pollution", THE OCEAN have enlisted the talents of filmmaker Craig Murray (MOGWAI, CONVERGE) to create a narrative arc that combines the arrival of new vocalists Lane Shi and Enrico Tiberi with the song's lyrics. Murray's attention to detail is a match for THE OCEAN; his specificity with regards to costume, design and props elevates the visual accompaniment to "Light Pollution" to a cinematic level.
"Craig is a one-man army", comments Staps. "Every detail of the film exists in his head before he starts to shoot, he's got hand-drawn sketches of every single scene. He gets up at 6:30 to make molds, shoot and direct, and he's still up at 2 a.m. glueing tentacles or smearing slime and sand over faces. He's a machine."
With their 12th studio album, THE OCEAN usher in a new era in the band's 25-year history. Emmanuel Jessua of HYPNO5E and Marco Gennaro join on guitar, while vocalists Enrico Tiberi and Lane Shi (ELIZABETH COLOUR WHEEL, OTAY:ONII) step in to replace Loïc Rossetti.
For the recording of "Solaris", the band further expanded its creative circle with contributions from Thorsten Quaeschning of TANGERINE DREAM on modular synthesizers. Jens Bogren, who previously mixed the band's landmark albums "Pelagial" and "Phanerozoic I" and "II", once again handled mixing and mastering.
"Solaris" track listing:
01. 52°30'11" N, 13°26'12" E
02. Departure Song
03. Light Pollution
04. Simulacra
05. Belligerence
06. Ultima Esperanza
07. Milk Of My Dreams
08. 51°28'30" S, 73°6'11" W
(Source: www.blabbermouth.net)
