The innermost of innermost

I’m here (Tim Stark) chatting with Rich Solarstone about the ten tracks that comprise his new album innermost.

Honed over five years, it’s shaped by his experiences of becoming a husband, a father for the second time, and watching his firstborn come of age. Here, we’re going to explore it track by track and find out what lies at the heart of each recording.

Tim: Now Rich, one of the earliest pieces to be completed for the album was shivelight, which indeed opens the album. This is inspired, to a degree, by Julee Cruise’s Falling — the theme to Twin Peaks — isn’t it? Tell us about that.

Rich: So, the main theme in there is the baritone guitar – I created a patch for it using a sample from the Julie Cruise track. I wanted to do something that’s kind of cinematic, quite filmic — intro-ish, overture-ish. It was the second track I made with this album in mind. The first track, incidentally, was Sovereign. But then we needed to have a single, and I didn’t have anything else. I thought, I’m going to have to put that out. I wanted the whole album to be brand new music that nobody had heard, so Sovereign got cut and shivelight took its place.

Tim: Another early cornerstone was your sacrifice, featuring Clara Yates.

Solarstone: Indeed, the lovely Clara Yates! Her lyrics are about her father, and when I heard the vocal, it really got to me. I’d been thinking a lot about my own relationship with my kids — being away from them, what that means — so I decided to keep her voice really soft in the mix. I wanted people to lean into it, to really hear what she was saying.

Tim: Then came over the mountains — a track born from a personal parenting ritual, I believe?

Solarstone: Correct. Back in the day, I used to whisper “down the valley / up the hill / over the mountains” to my son, Oscar, as something of a lullaby when I put him to bed. He left home recently, and that hit me hard emotionally. So, I turned that little phrase into a full track. I wanted it to have that classic happy-sad Solarstone feel. Warm, emotional, with a kind of comfort to it.

Tim: Cool — well, that brings us to dream sequence. And when I first heard this, I got really strong Underworld Rez vibes. And maybe even a little bit more leftfield — some Sill Windows in there as well?

Solarstone: Totally. A few years back I found myself drawn into those simple, spacious analogue sounds. You say “leftfield,” but to me it’s actually more Leftfield — the group — and more specifically, even, their album Leftism. That album’s mood stayed with me while I was producing this. I had all these old DATs lying around. On one of them contained this flanged breakbeat I’d sampled and chopped over a decade ago. During COVID, I finally dug it out and used it on dream sequence. So yeah, some of these tracks started ages ago — I was just waiting for the right time.

Tim Stark: And star — that features Susie Ledge, right? Her first appearance on a Solarstone track?

Solarstone: Yeah. star came from a traditional Irish melody that Enya once sang. I didn’t want to sample it, so we recreated it with Susie’s layered vocals. Then she wrote new verses, and the track just found its own identity. I was going for that dreamy vibe — like Smokebelch II by The Sabres of Paradise. It took ages to finish. I wasn’t sure — was it trance? Was it ambient? Was it pop?

Tim Stark: You’re the tortured artist, Richard.

Solarstone: [Laughs] Yeah, definitely. Paula, my wife, told me to stop overthinking and just finish the damn thing!! She’s amazing at sequencing to create the right contrast across the album. Ten tracks, all different, but they flow — she had a lot of input there. I kept challenging her choices, but every time, she was right. The contrast between the tracks makes the whole thing stronger.

Tim: So, what of innermost — the title track?

Solarstone: It was originally called Starlings, inspired by watching a murmuration of starlings in Aberystwyth with Paula, and our baby. Paula bought me a piano for my 50th, so I worked on the piece there. I made videos of me playing it on synth and piano. A friend told me to just do the piano version, which gave me confidence. I practiced until I could play it fully, then recorded it with virtual piano, then added guitar and strings. It took weeks and lots of back and forth, but it became this simply beautiful track.

Tim: Nailed it in the end, right!?

Solarstone: Exactly. Starlings was the original title — I sent my mum a piano video, and she loved the name. But the album had too many “S” titles, so when I named the album innermost, I changed the track title too.

Tim Stark: What about underground? The lyrics are quite deep.

Solarstone: I started underground years ago with Neil Cowmeadow. We had a chord progression, but it sat unused. Later, after my depression diagnosis, I wrote lyrics using the word “underground” as a metaphor for it. Neil hated the vocal version, so I shelved it. Years later, I gave it to singer Evan Henzi, who related to the lyrics and brought it to life. When I sent it back to Neil, he still didn’t like it! That didn’t bother me. I learned to finish music for myself. If I get goosebumps once, it’s worth finishing.

Tim: And sonata?

Solarstone: That one was easier. I wrote it on piano and thought it sounded like other tracks — State of Mind, like Motif. It’s inspired by early ’90s trance with rounded kicks, classic synths, and sampled percussion. I used the 101 for the main line. The album version ends on piano, with a vibe like Moonlight Sonata, which inspired the name. It also started with “S,” but we decided to rename another track instead, so it fit better in the album’s track-list.

Tim Stark: Which brings us to boy, doesn’t it? And this was meant to be a collaboration, right?

Solarstone: Yes, with Armin van Buuren. He loved it and wanted to collaborate, but it dragged on & I ended up pulling out because I liked the track as it was. Probably the only producer to walk away from Armin for artistic reasons! Maybe we’ll do something later though.

Tim: And then complicated, the big emotional finale?

Solarstone: That’s right. There are elements in this track which date back almost 20 years, the synth solo recorded in 2005, I wrote the song about 10 years ago, the strings were scored in 2018, one part was inspired by Moments in Love by Art of Noise. I even used the Emulator II synth for that. I resisted completing the track until I had the right ‘vehicle’ for it – the innermost album. The song is about my complicated, layered relationship with Paula.

Tim: I remember when you first met her — it was at Ferry’s place. There was definitely something in the air that day!

Solarstone: That there was! The strings were by Petri (Lowland) Alanko from Finland. He was going through a tough time with his wife; when he played her the arrangement, she cried. That told me this track belonged on the album. I wrote the lyrics years ago, but this was the only album for it. It’s the perfect closing track — the last piano “bong” signals the end. Then you wonder: do you start again or take a break?

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