REVIEWS:
"Masterful and transformative!!! A wonderful piece to wake up to on a spring morning, like throwing open the windows and letting the day in with all its shifting currents of promise, of movement, of mercurial moments of joy and the hum of eternity."
-Max Reinhardt, BBC 3/Soho Radio (London)
ABOUT THIS TRACK:
Originally commissioned by and composed for the UK's Cities and Memory project, "The Distant Horizon" closes their Various Artists compilation album "The Sound of Adventure"(March 2024). The band offer this track here as a stand alone release.
A global, collaborative sound art and field recording program with the aim, as they say, “of remixing the world one sound at a time”, Cities and Memory have, over the years collected thousands of field recordings from around the world and commissioned artists to re-imagine them in composition.
Working with a field recording made along the Piazza San Marco in Venice, the band both incorporated the original sound into the new piece and took inspiration from it in composing this new work, like an underscoring of the experience, both full of wonder and melancholy.
ABOUT THE BAND:
"Shimmering. There is hauntology at work. Hauntology right in the center of their work." -Max Reinhardt (Soho Radio/BBC Radio 3)
"Magical & majestic." -Indiemusic (France)
"Mesmerizing. A tiny gem that beguiles." -The Sound Projector (UK)
"Epic & affecting." -Surface Noise
"Beautiful, great drifty pop, full of sadness and wonder." -Irene Trudel, WFMU
“Mysterious. Otherworldly. An emotional musical journey.” - Carson Street, KFJC
"Celestial & spell-bounding compositions astounding us with beauty. Brilliant, luminous & cathartic. Puts shoegaze back into a state of grace." -Les Oreilles Curieuses (France)
"Ethereal music that sends the listener up towards the heavens to sit aloft on the clouds above. Truly ascendant." -Carol Crow, WFMU
BIPOLAR EXPLORER are an NYC-based experimental dreampop trio featuring Summer Serafin (vocals, spoken word), Michael Serafin-Wells (guitars, vocals, bass, organ, synth, melodica, tape loops, percussion, spoken word) and Sylvia Solanas (spoken word - English/French).
The signature interweaving of spoken word into the band’s work is described by the UK’s Norman Records as “a cross between Slowdive and Laurie Anderson - a late night radio transmission drifting to us, half asleep in bed”.
The eclectic nature of the band’s sound continued to evolve as they began contributing to the UK’s storied experimental radio project, The Dark Outside. More experimental pieces began appearing on the band’s albums with compositions that folded in field recordings with new instrumentation and tape loops and woven together with their existing ambient, spoken word and shoegaze-y anthems resulted in recordings more thematic, or as the group has taken to calling them “dreamscapes”.
Forging an unique sound well serves the new works Serafin-Wells began composing after the tragic loss of his partner, BPX co-founder, Summer Serafin, who passed away in 2011, just 31.
As Michael told Indiemusic’s Raphael Duprez in a feature about the band (February 2017): “All of this is entirely for her. I often say that our music, each album, is of, for and about her. Summer remains an integral part of the band - not only as its inspiration but, because I have an archive of her isolated tracks, her vocals grace each new album as I write songs and fly in her voice. Summer isn’t the main reason BPX goes on, she’s the only reason. She is the reason. And I think I can trust that I’m doing things for the right reason if I always know the reason for it is her. Not out of any ambition other than to honor and conjure her. She’s my conscience."
Of equal importance was the addition of French-born vocalist, Sylvia Solanas, who joined the group in 2018, singing backing vocals and voicing Serafin-Wells’s original narrative spoken word poetry beginning with their 8th album, "Til Morning is Nigh".
Bipolar Explorer’s albums include "In The Hours Left Until Dawn" (2023); "Forests, Voices, Coastlines, Dreams: Recordings for The Dark Outside" (2021); "Deux Anges" (2020); "Til Morning is Nigh: A Dream of Christmas" (2018); "Sometimes in Dreams" (2018); "Dream Together" (2017); "Electric Hymnal" (2016); "Angels" (2015); "BPXmas" (2014), "Of Love and Loss" (2012) and (pre-Summer) "Go Negative". All are available on Slugg Records.
credits
credits
released April 15, 2024
Summer Serafin - vocals.
Michael Serafin-Wells - guitars, baritone guitar, bass, tape loops, percussion, vocals.
Sylvia Solanas - vocals.
Composed by Michael Serafin-Wells. c. 2024 Thirteen November Music (ASCAP).
Recorded live, noisily and in a hurry at The Shrine - NYC.
Field recording - Piazza San Marco, Venice, Italy.
Produced by Bipolar Explorer.
Mastered by Scott Craggs, Old Colony - Boston.
Cover image by Sylvia Solanas.
We first heard a track - "Night Ships (Sea Mist)" - from this album on SOMA-fm, found Swartz et here on B/C, and bought the next morning. It's been in heavy rotation ever since. Gorgeous stuff! Bipolar Explorer
We listened to this album obsessively every day for a couple of months after we first heard it. It's boldly all instrumental, lush, richly melodic and just a tremendous album. Full of emotion. Love! Bipolar Explorer
We first heard Siavash Amini on WFMU's great "Neighbor Noise" show. "Luminous Residue" was our gateway track. Beautiful & haunting dark ambient, almost cinematically evocative. Bipolar Explorer
An introspective record that fuses post-rock, shoegaze and ambient synth patches into a seamless array of shimmering soundscapes. Bandcamp New & Notable Jan 26, 2023
Airships on the Water return with another LP of phenomenally textured post-rock, moving from tender passages to well-earned crescendos. Bandcamp New & Notable Feb 13, 2022
