Forty tracks, one hour and forty-one minutes of music. This is the latest release from Richard Russell, aka Everything is Recorded, called Solstice Equinox. Even better: you’ll rarely get bored in this slightly crazy, yet fluid, creation.
Let’s recap: Richard Russell runs the record label XL, which has produced albums by Adele, Radiohead, Florence and the Machine, Damon Albarn, and more. He’s also a prolific electronic musician and arranger.
Solstice Equinox is the fourth album from Everything Is Recorded. Apparently, it came out just four months after the previous album, Temporary, which I reviewed rather positively on PAN M 360.
Once again, Richard Russell finds himself surrounded by a host of eclectic collaborators, ranging from singer and keyboardist Sampha to the French-Cuban twins Ibeyi, via saxophonist Alabaster DePlume, trumpeter Yazz Ahmed, originally from Bahrain, and many more.
These forty pieces are the result of four recording sessions in 2023 and 2024, precisely on the occasion of the summer or winter solstices and the spring and autumn equinoxes. “Everything is in everything,” as our Raoul Duguay would have said. Richard Russell is a man of concepts.
After the sessions, he took some time to remix everything and add his electronic touches to make it a coherent whole. In my humble opinion, it works quite well. We travel to an electro world, dotted with jazz, folk, and scents of the Orient or Asia.
On Solstice Equinox, there is more of an electronic “touch” than on Temporary. There is less emphasis on the singing voice and the lyrics; and more on the voice as a musical instrument.
Forty pieces for one hundred and one minutes: you understand that the pieces are on average two and a half minutes long. This is what makes the whole thing hold together, despite some inevitable redundancies. We move quickly from one mood to another, but everything flows together extremely well.
Of course, you have to like the genre: rather soft electro, with some dissonances and fuzzy guitars, but overall very enveloping.
This Richard Russell is helping to keep Britain on an innovative musical path. He is far from alone.
