{"id":3365,"date":"2013-10-30T21:03:29","date_gmt":"2013-10-30T21:03:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/?p=3365"},"modified":"2023-11-19T17:56:49","modified_gmt":"2023-11-19T22:56:49","slug":"album-review-our-solar-systems-vart-solsystem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/album-review-our-solar-systems-vart-solsystem\/","title":{"rendered":"ALBUM REVIEW: Our Solar System’s V\u00e5rt Solsystem"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"OSS_Press_photo\"<\/a>Our Solar System <\/strong>describe themselves as \u201ca floating crowd of people, where everyone who wants to be part of creating within these cosmic frames is welcome.\u201d That\u2019s about as specific as they get, but we do know the newly formed Swedish music collective includes ten musicians hailing from other Swedish bands like Dungen and Life on Earth!. Their debut album, released Oct. 29 on NYC label Beyond Beyond is Beyond, is a compelling piece of concept art, composed around the artists\u2019 thoughts and feelings about\u2014you guessed it\u2014our solar system. V\u00e5rt Solsystem <\/i>is a pretty short album, with the ten tracks (each representing a planet, but also including the asteroid belt and Pluto) clocking in at a little over 45 minutes long.<\/p>\n

<\/i>The prerequisite with V\u00e5rt Solsystem<\/i>, which was recorded live over the span of two nights in Stockholm, is to listen to it all the way through with no interruptions. All of the tracks lead seamlessly into one another, creating the sense that this is all one whirlwind journey through space\u2014some kind of quick guided tour that stops at each planet for photo ops and bathroom breaks. The first track (and the first stop on our tour), \u201cMerkurius,\u201d bursts open like the big bang itself, spilling out a frenzied blend of flute, bass, drums, and keyboard effects (to name a few of the main players) that quickly coagulate into a fast-paced rhythm perfect for take off.<\/p>\n

\u201cVenus\u201d has a very interstellar sound, stripped down but volatile, tranquil and suspenseful at the same time, which I would think is a pretty accurate portrayal of what traveling through space might feel like. We then come to \u201cJorden\u201d\u2014Earth\u2014which is the shortest track on the record, comprised solely of an amalgam of voices, some speaking emphatically (\u201cJUST LEAVE!\u201d) and others softly singing (\u201cAre you lonesome tonight\u2026\u201d). The two minutes of poetic white noise give you just enough time to picture our little Earth as if from afar and wonder what each of its billions of inhabitants are doing at that exact moment.<\/p>\n

According to their bio, Our Solar System perform their shows \u201cin identical outfits adorned with planetary symbols to highlight the concept\u2019s power over the individual.\u201d That sounds pretty zany but once you get into this album, you begin to realize that the \u201cconcept\u2019s power\u201d is for real. For me, the moment of realization came right after \u201cJorden\u201d and before \u201cMars,\u201d a chaotic and heavy concoction with a slight Jimi Hendrix tincture. The five-minute-long track comes to an off-putting end, though, as cooing voices become a little frightened and then become high pitched, panicked shrieks. Mars sounds like a straight up scary planet, which is made more apparent when contrasted with the subsequent, minimalist, and quintessentially alien-sounding track, \u201cAsteroidb\u00e4ltet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Next are the two longest tracks, \u201cJupiter\u201d and \u201cSaturnus.\u201d The former is a bass heavy, hazy number\u2014appropriate for a planet that\u2019s perpetually cloudy and tempestuous. \u201cSaturnus,\u201d on the other hand, begins seductively, with a smooth, female voice ooh-ing and aah-ing, but as the song progresses the voice takes on a weary quality and the instrumentals become frantic and overwhelming.<\/p>\n

The trip continues with \u201cUranus,\u201d a very Sigur Ros-esque, melancholy affair replete with wailing violins, subdued electric guitar, and a celestial choir of female voices. This leads into \u201cNeptunus,\u201d which first lulls you into a sense of happy serenity, as if you\u2019re floating through a stream of stars, before picking up into a \u201890s alt-rock jam along the lines of Yo La Tengo (except with some weird, psychedelic chanting thrown in for good measure).<\/p>\n

The last three minutes are reserved for Pluto, but they\u2019re really just a rather vacant outtro with a few extraterrestrial sound effects. It serves its purpose, though, of making a smooth transition back to reality, kind of like when a hypnotist tells his subject that they will wake up at the snap of his fingers, feeling oddly calm and refreshed. You might come out of V\u00e5rt Solsystem<\/i> in a similar, subtle daze, but only if you take the time to delve into the album and commit yourself to the ride. I think you\u2019ll find it\u2019s worth it.<\/p>\n

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Our Solar System describe themselves as \u201ca floating crowd of people, where everyone who wants to be part of creating within these cosmic frames is welcome.\u201d That\u2019s about as specific as they get, but we do know the newly formed Swedish music collective includes ten musicians hailing from other Swedish bands like Dungen and Life […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":3397,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[206,638,202],"tags":[476,654],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/OSS_Press_photo.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3365"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3365"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48573,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3365\/revisions\/48573"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}