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 We sit down with the man behind Solarstone, Rich Mowatt to talk about his latest artist masterpiece 'Pure'...
For over a decade Solarstone (Rich Mowatt) has rained fire onto dancefloors with a procession of revered club classics, all-out anthems & critically-acclaimed albums. His highly-innovative 2009 Electronic Architecture compilation album was nominated for an International Dance Music Award last month and prompted Tilllate to say that it was: “magical blend of music, art and design” that “recalled the understated magic of Sasha and Digweed’s first Renaissance albums”.
At the forefront of trance music’s nu-cool, his forthcoming artist album (the follow up to the critically-acclaimed ‘Rain Stars Eternal) prompted DJ Magazine to say in his March 2010 interview that: “Solarstone’s new artist album will shake up expectations of what trance should be”. As a DJ, he spins at clubs around the planet and for globally-recognized names like Cream @ Amnesia, Ministry of Sound, Gatecrasher & Full-On-Ferry. Releases from Solarstone’s label projects Solaris, solarSwarm, Crashing Waves & Molecule are the instrumental components of his highly individualistic sets and are consistently supported by the trance & prog spinning elite. Solaris International, his radio show is broadcast across some 45 FM & Internet stations and with its fully-fleshed-out format has become a staple weekly listen for tens of thousands of electronic music devotees.
i:Vibes: Rich thanks for taking some time to talk to i-vibes again. It has been a while since we last chatted. 2012 is almost half over. What has been your coolest experience in and out of the club?
Solarstone: Hmmmm well I guess my coolest club experience since we last spoke was ASOT550 at Ministry of Sound, London – that was a massive gig, so well organized with an amazing buzz throughout the night. My coolest experience outside the clubs was helping my son ride his bike without stabilizers for the first time. i:Vibes: You are back in 2012 with your third studio album. The last Touchstone was produced with one ear on the at home listen while Pure was made predominantly for the club. What were the main reasons for taking the Solarstone sound back to the club? Solarstone: When I produced the ‘Touchstone’ album it was a diversion from the fragmentation that was occurring within the trance scene, it was quite an introspective album from me – I just wanted to make a record that you could listen to in the car or at home. Most of the tracks were remixed into club mixes, but the album itself certainly was not a club record. The music on ‘Pure’ is primarily the kind of music that I want to play at my gigs, I decided to reclaim my ground. i:Vibes: How has the trance sound changed and developed in general in the last three years since you were in the studio making Touchstone? Solarstone: I think that is fairly self evident, the explosion in the Swedish ‘Trouse’ sound has had a massive impact, I think this is partly why ‘Pure’ and my ‘Pure Trance’ message has had such an impact – there is now a massive gap in the market for what I call ‘Pure’ trance. I think that is very dangerous as a producer or Dj to follow what are ultimately transient and temporary fads and fashions in the music business – particularly this current one, because when the bubble bursts you are in trouble. I see many of my contemporaries switching to this ‚Trouse‘ sound, but it is already in decline – as soon as you start to hear a hype genre in daytime radio, it is already dead on the underground. I would rather tick to my guns and do my own thing rather than follow others. Better to be a shepherd than a sheep. i:Vibes: Why did you name the album pure? Solarstone: The album is ‘Pure Solarstone’, in that it’s probably the album my fans have always wanted me to make. Now these days the scene in the main seems (to me) to be dominated by a harsh and cold sounding form of alleged trance music, it really says nothing to me and I can’t hear any of the spiritual & core elements of Pure Trance in it, hence why I decided to go back to my roots to rediscover the true essence of what trance music truly is. This album is both a purification and celebration of the term TRANCE. I’m reclaiming it, for all those who just want to dance to music that takes them to another place, for whom this music is a feeling, a passion, a way of life. Of coarse the album is not entirely four-to-the-floor, there are some down tempo diversions on there, but the majority of it is feel-good club music, that’s why I called it ‘Pure’. It’s both Pure Trance, and Pure Solarstone. i:Vibes: In your press release for Pure you stated: “I recorded this album as a reaction to all the riven division that’s crept into trance over the last 3 years. It’s a kickback against nonsense genre terminologies and a fight-back against the self-appointed style councils that try to tell us what music’s cool and what the latest must-like is. Against tracks that have such a mish-mash of sound styles that even their producers don’t know what they are making. This album is both a purification and celebration of the term TRANCE. I’m reclaiming it, for all those who just want to dance to music that takes them to another place, for whom this music is a feeling, a passion, a way of life”. You sound like a professor of dialogue when reading that. To what place does Pure exactly take you to when listening? Solarstone: That’s for the listener to decide, ultimately. I just know I enjoyed recording it! i:Vibes: Three tracks are featured with Claire Stagg including track #2 Jewel. What amazes you most about her voice and creative input that she gave to the album? Solarstone: Clare has a unique and very controlled voice; she is a very proficient writer too. We write incredibly easily together, it would have been a very different album without Clare’s appearances. She actually comes from a Folk background, edm isn’t really her ‘bag’, but I do predict that she will be a very successful artist in her own right. i:Vibes: On Shake the Demons, you team up with Billy McGruddy again after doing so on Touchstone. How has this collaboration work with him developed from Touchstone to Pure? Solarstone: Bill and I first worked together in 1999 on ‘I Want You’ by Z2 – it was the first release on my then label Deep Blue. We kept in touch and like to write together now and again. The vocal in ‘Shake The Demons’ was actually taken from a session we did many years ago for another track, we also co-wrote ‘Swansong’ which Hannah Magenta sang on. i:Vibes: What was your inspiration behind Voyager? I love the vocal. I assume it's you. I also hinted some old school sounds in there and the melody is top once again. Solarstone: Ha! No – the vocal is not me; I sourced it from some rare N.A.S.A footage from the Voyager mission. It’s interesting that you refer to some of the sounds in the track as ‘old school’ – I don’t hear them like that at all. Tracks these days are largely so over-produced and there is often little to hook on to – just a load of production tricks and noises which create an impression by no lasting memory. The melodies in ‘Voyager’ are very simple, the production very transparent. i:Vibes: On Where do we go from here, you give a mammoth duet performance with Betsie Larkin. You give a very convincing voice to the track with much feeling. How much fun is it singing on tracks and getting away from the producing end for a moment? Solarstone: Thanks! It took me a few years to get used to hearing the sound of my own singing voice; it was ‘Late Summer Fields’ which gave me the confidence. ‘Where Do We Go’ is a very personal track actually. I love Betsie’s parts. I admit it is a brave thing to release a track like this, a lot of people will probably hate it, but as far as I’m concerned it’s from the heart, which makes it valid. i:Vibes: On Fireisland, you team up with trance duo Aly & Fila. This is a beautiful produced track. How were the duties on the production end set up between the two parties? Solarstone: The track was based on a demo I recorded when working on Electronic Architecture 2. The melodies were good, but the production was crap. I sent the stems to Fadi - it was originally going to be an ambient track. They added their own pluck topline and lovely pads and FX, when I heard it I knew it simply needed to be turned into a club track. I took their stems and did the rest of the production myself. Since then, they have recorded their own club mix too. i:Vibes: Female vocal numbers seem to pollute the trance scene since many years. How were you able to give Requiem the special unique Solarstone sound? Solarstone: I wouldn’t use the word ‘pollute’ about female vocal tracks, I’d only use that word to describe the crappy generic rubbish with nonsense lyrics that gets released sometimes. In my opinion unless you have something worth saying, don’t say it. Don’t write lyrics unless you mean them. Clare’s lyrics in ‘Requiem’, ‘The Spell’ etc.. Actually mean something, they tell a story, it’s not all ‘lets fly away, I love you, you love me, let’s have a cup of tea’ bollocks. ‘Requiem’ is a very symbolic lyric. I love beautiful female vocal trance tracks; I’m actually working on a remix right now of something fabulous by The Thrillseekers with a gorgeous vocal that gives me goose bumps when I hear it! i:Vibes: You produced Falcons with one of Trance´s heavyweights Giuseppe Ottaviani. You hear the Ottaviani/PVD sounds right at the start. How were you able to make this a track where one could hear some of those Solarstone elements? Solarstone: I think this is a great example of a collab where you can hear both artists’ elements in the mix. Giuseppe definitely has a signature sound which is apparent in the track, I think the Solarstone sound comes across more in the overall production and arrangement of the track. Interestingly this track ‘grew’ on me, which is odd for one of my own productions, I wasn’t sure about it at first, but now I love it. Sounds amazing in a big club too! i:Vibes: A great thing about your music is that it is never typical. On Please one is always guessing where the musical journey will go. Please seems a very complicated piece of music. What was the most difficult thing you had to do to get the track Solarstone perfect? Solarstone: Thanks! I do get quite deeply involved in my productions; I like to experiment with different and sometimes unusual production techniques. ‘Please’ was tricky because I really wanted to give it a retro Solarstone sound, but at the same time make it sound modern – I jumped through some serious hoops with that one! I think I achieved it, probably. i:Vibes: On the Spell you team up with Claire Stagg again. How has the world feedback been on the current single? Solarstone: I think you already know the answer to that – considering that it trended on Twitter and was playing on ASOT 5 times, it’s done quite well. The lyrics of ‘The Spell’ as not your typical ‘trance’ lyrics either – I think it shows that trance lovers appreciate more than they are sometimes given credit for in terms of lyrical depth. i:Vibes: Lovers has that moody touch in your vocals, but then again hope in the music. What kind of mood were you when you produced it? Solarstone: This is also a very personal track, in terms of the mood it was complicated cross between ‘resigned submission’ and ‘defiant optimism’ – bit of a contradiction. i:Vibes: Presence of the past is a fitting title for the track as it really brings back musical memories of the past. This is the perfect living room song. What artists from back in the day were you thinking of when you were putting this together? Solarstone: Banco De Gaia, Bob Holroyd, Boards of Canada, Fila Brazillia, Kruder & Dorfmeister, people like that. Back in the late 90s and early 00’s I used to smoke rather a lot of weed, I spent a lot of time listening to music like this – the position of ‘Presence’ as the penultimate track on the album is very intentional – whenever I listen to this one it always makes me feel sleepy, very relaxed, chilled out, it prepares the listener perfectly for ‘Swansong’. i:Vibes: You close the album with Swansong featuring Hannah Magnena. with the angelic voice. Why did you decide to end the album with this lovely piece of music? Solarstone: Apart from the title, there’s really nowhere to go after this track, it closes the album perfectly. This one was based upon a track Bill McGruddy and I wrote for a play, which never got finished, originally it was in ¾ time and consisted of piano, guitar and cello. I made it completely electronic, I was aiming for something along the lines of ‘Rachael’s Song’ by Vangelis. I think it’s a similar sounding song, in that the lead vocal is purely phonetic, there are no words, yet it is a very emotional vocal performance. i:Vibes: What do you want the listeners to remember most from the album Pure? Solarstone: I don’t know… as an artist when you finish an album and send it off into the world it becomes independent of the writer, it develops its own identity, you feel strangely detached to it from that moment, it becomes public property. All I’d really like people to understand is that it is music from the heart, there is nothing contrived about the album. I hope people like it.
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