At a whole sixteen tracks long, The Foggy Jefferson Orchestra’s debut release is incredibly ambitious. The collective, which comprises an assortment of electro musicians federated by WebRadio Radio Equinoxe and the associative label CosmXPloreR, is at their most pathbreaking on ‘Solstices’. Constantly, each track feels like a new innovation, paving boundaries to new worlds and even more imaginative soundscapes. The record is a collection of sixteen originals from sixteen artists. It’s divided in the centre, hence the name, into Litha (the summer solstice) with updated sounds and Yule (the winter solstice) with more vintage sounds.
Opening with the distinctively futuristic, almost immediately sci-fi sounding vastness of Solstinox, the orchestra start to take you down a realm that feels deeply cinematic while retaining a sense of empty darkness within. As it transitions into ‘Liquid Harmony for Solid Melody’, the more empty vastness is discarded for something a bit more quaint and expressively melodic in nature. It’s far more minimal, at least outwardly so. On Fabien Labonde’s ambitious piece, ‘History’, there’s experimentation and innovation abound. The track feels like it’s going in ten different directions all at once. It has an underlying rhythm and melodic riff that appears to steer it, but all the while there’s a host of tiny sonic elements that keep emerging and echoing across your sound system of choice.
As you progress into the record’s second half, the aptly named ‘Rain’ brings an ambient aesthetic to almost offer a sonic reset to your senses so far. Once again, there’s a deep sense of darkness that prevails on this piece. But around the one and a half minute mark, it’s energy picks up into something far more exuberant, an almost disco-esque beat. The effervescent beats and strange sonic bops and beats on ‘Moon Rise’ also are worth a listen.
There’s simply too much happening to pen down on this record, but it’s effort in crafting and putting together such an ambitious arrangement of musicians while maintaining an aesthetic, journey, and sound, is nothing short of remarkable.