Interview with Solarein

My name is Vru Patel and I’m a full time medical student now in my third year, and in spare time I love tinkering with sounds and creating music. In the past, I have released music under the moniker Knoxband, as well as a couple of albums under my own name, which you can find available for download via Sonic Fire Records. Solarein, however; is a dream project of mine that I began back in 2008 in my bedroom. Over the years, I have managed to improve my sound by refining and making it bigger, and wider, but the core of Solarein remains the same, a guitar, keys, a laptop, and lots of grand ideas and a need for something to say.

Solarein is a self-defined concept of bliss that you feel when you are enjoying the light and warmth of the sun.

Yes, Reveries is the first full length album to be released by Solarein. However, initially I started working on a concept double album called The Cube, but that project was taking a while to finish. And, the last time I had released something via Solarein was the Demo EP in 2010. So there I am sitting down in my bedroom, in Poland where I study, during my week long spring break, wanting to create a piece of music, but I don’t want to work within the parameters of anything I was currently working on. And, with the state of mind that I was in, six hours later out came “Forty Thousand.”

To me this was shocking because I often work on entire albums together then let them marinade for a few months to a year, sometimes unhappy with production and how it sounds, I’ll keep perfecting it to how I want it and later when I feel comfortable I’d release the album. But Reveries was something quicker, faster, and much more rough in production and I loved that energy. It was free and fun to not have boundaries or rules to work on these songs. To me it was sort of like mental snap shots, scanning my self and putting it into these songs in terms of mood, atmosphere, the people I was around, all the experiences I had while I was traveling through gorgeous european cities.

Out of the three songs I wrote that week, two made it on the record, “Forty Thousand” and “Luminescence.” And then I just kept going, every so often stopping to take a snap and put it into a song and before I knew it there were enough to piece together an album. I wanted Reveries to be something fun and full of energy, but at the same time have heart. I wanted the listeners to enter a daze and dream while listening to the music and confront their fantasies. I think that would be an overall concept of the record, though nothing in specific. The songs mean something to me as they are a snapshot of who I was when I wrote them, but I wanna refrain from sharing that since I want you to have your own experience with it.

There are two songs where I’ve used other musicians, One is my best friend Amit Naik played some flute on “I Armene Dine,” which I thought was absolutely beautiful and sort of reminded me of a 90s Indian film music or something gave it this playful and vibrant vibe and captured some of the lightheartedness that I think the song required. He also happened to have helped me write some of the lyrics to “Luminescence.” And, a very good friend of mine Sobia Khan, was humming a melody one night and I decided to put her in front of a microphone and get it down and her voice and this hauntingly beautiful melody became the roots for “The Warning.” The rest of the album was just me messing about.

Wow thank you so much, I’m glad you like “Forty Thousand” it’s one of the main songs off this record, as I explained earlier it’s one of those songs that defined the sound of Reveries, so I consider it one of the support structures of the record. I would say my two favorites would have to be “The ‘Warning” and “Reveries” (the song). “The Warning'” because it captures all of the instruments and sounds I’ve used through out the album in one song, and if someone were to come up to me and ask show me what your music sounds like in 2014, I would point them towards “The Warning.” And, “Reveries” because what started out as being merely an prelude to “Porcelain Shattered,” but became something else entirely. Not only did It stand independently, but it also captured the theme and concept of this album really well. It’s very spacey and ambient, something misty and dreamy, hence I named the album after it.

I am a huge fan of the idea to combine the visual medium and music together. And, with every album I am trying to find the right artwork counter part to the music that I’ve created, sometimes I have to photograph it myself other times I rely on a talented photographer and friend Kay Jensen to help me out. His work is brilliant, moody and melancholic and seems to fit quite well to the music I normally make. This time around I decided to try something different. I approached a visual artist Emi Nguyen whose work I am a huge fan of  and asked her if she would be willing to work together in creating something for this record, and sent her some of the music I had finished at the time. In fact I would go as far as saying some of the photographs she sent initially inspired some of the music I composed later. I think it was a rewarding experience working closely in putting together the artwork and the music. As you suggested,  some of the images do relate to specific songs, but I wanted the artwork to stand on its own. In the end, I am very happy with this process as well as collaboration and am planning on do this for all of my music from now on.

Hahah wow quite a challenging question, this one has stumped me. I will have to think about it and get back to you on this one!

Haha, why thank you, I often try to photograph the things around me that I find particularly beautiful and share them on my instagram. To answer your question, I have no particular favorite social media, but at this time Facebook and YouTube seem to be the most effective in terms of meeting new people, and sharing your art with them. Although I will be honest with you, I prefer music on physical medium, wether if its vinyl, cassettes or CDs, but the Internet and social media websites. Veterans like Bandcamp, Soundcloud, YouTube, or some of the newer revolutionary ideas like Kolidr have made it possible for an independent artist like myself to come forth and reach people across the world with relative ease and I think that’s awesome.

Courtesy of We Have A Ghost, a close friend and mentor, who I’ve worked with very closely on this record and he helped tremendously. Just as I had 90% of the album completed, I asked him to suggest me a few labels that I could be a part of and he introduced me to Paul McConaghy from Bleeding Light. I would say it has been an absolute pleasure in being associated with them. They have stopped at nothing to help me realize my dream and I cannot thank them both enough.

I haven’t been able to figure out why people consider me to be so productive, I honestly think I’m quite slow in my process of writing music and releasing it. Some of the albums in the past have take me over a few years to complete, some like the aforementioned The Cube are taking me even longer. But Solarein has always been an outlet for me to share my music and photography, and through it my thoughts and ideas and in return it keeps me sane and stress free from work life and school. I’ve always been fond of messing around and manipulating sounds, and I’ve fallen in love with the idea of making concept records. To me the whole process of putting together songs that have similar thematic ideas, but also are part of a narrative and tell a story is quite rewarding. So, I suppose to answer your question, either I’m really stressed or I have quite a few stories to tell.

Being a slave to the music and vision of Solarein, I’ve had to teach myself how to play a lot of the instruments that the music demanded, or even learn how to sing because at the time it was difficult to find like minded people that wanted to work on the type of music I was interested in making. But, I am very open to the idea and dying to collaborate with other artists out there. I would love a chance to work with them, bring some guests vocalists, or guitarists in and provide them with a medium to show off their potential and together build something that I could not achieve myself. At times I’ve even considered producing someone and helping them piece together their own record. Now that would be truly amazing!

At the moment with school and other things in my agenda it’s just not possible to find the time to perform live so for now unfortunately Solarein remains a studio project. But who knows maybe in the near future with the right opportunity and resources at my disposal I would absolutely love to play live.

I agree with you 100%. I am quite against the idea of one man pressing buttons and playing pre recorded tracks and singing over it. Actually, thats one of the challenges that’s stoping me from playing live. If i do it, I want to do it properly, like you suggested with a band where all the sounds and magic is created right in front of you. Thats the way a good live show should be, and as I mentioned with the right opportunity and people hopefully very soon it will be possible for me to achieve that. I mean can you imagine hearing “Forty Thousand” live with all of it’s energy and ambiance. It’d be brilliant!

This is going to sound cheesy, but I draw inspiration from all things around me wether it’s books, films, art, and life events and of course the people, my friends and family who support me. My fellow and very talented musicians such as A Great Weight, We Have A Ghost, Ventenner, Evolv, Nothing But Apes, Ummagma, and many more,  Besides that some of my favorite artists are Steven Wilson, Trent Reznor, Thom Yorke, Radiohead, Boards of Canada, M83, Sigur Rós, Sunn, and many more. There so much great music out there, you just need to know where to look. I suppose I ought to mention that I’ve put together a little group called ‘The Solar Six’ on Facebook and it comprises a lot of independent musicians and very talented visual artists in hopes to create a community where we can share each other’s art and maybe even collaborate with one another and Inspire each other. And, I invite you all to join in!

Lots of things, In terms of more music a lot more collaboration work, some remixes and some original music, some of the projects are already under way and I’m quite exited to share them with you, hopefully very soon!  Also, I am planning on releasing Reveries in physical form, CDs and Cassettes, maybe even vinyl. And, Stephen Perez from Indelible Niche Collective and I are working very very hard to put together a Reveries CD with beautiful 8 page artwork booklet and around twenty minutes of additional music. And if all goes according to plan, will release it sometime around late august and September and pre-orders are being taken on the website – (reveries.solarein.com). Lastly, I plan to resume work on the concept record The Cube, it’s going to be a massive record.

Lastly, just wanted to thank you for giving me this opportunity to share some of my thoughts.

Album Streaming – http://bleedinglightrecords.com

Album Pre-Orders – http://reveries.solarein.com

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