Nicolás Jaar‘s Other People label has shared the debut album of Solpara, the Lebanese-American live act and DJ-producer.
Born in New York City, Solpara started DJing in the late ’00s when he was living in Montréal, Canada, and he later co-founded the Booma Collective, a label collective and event series focused on experimental techno, ambient, and house. Once back in New York, he spent a number of years as head buyer at the Halcyon record shop.
Melancholy Sabotage has been on his mind for a few years. He released the Swing EP on Other People in 2015 and was motivated to develop a full-length.
The album came to life while Solpara was living alone in a Brooklyn loft, collecting unemployment checks. He’d previously been forced to make music in odd windows between numerous jobs.
Free from obligations, he would wake up early to take Arabic lessons online, read Tracey Thorn’s autobiography, and skateboard the deserted streets, then come home and design sounds until he had a track that felt like it needed to be released.
Pushing through a tight mesh of widescreen ambient textures, slow-motion beats, dissonant guitar riffs, and saturated post-punk vocals, the album “confronts sadness head-on,” we’re told.
Tracklisting
01. Time to Hold Better
02. This Time Last Year
03. We Keep Us Safe
04. Melancholy Sabotage
05. Measures
06. We Don’t Owe
07. Breaking Points
08. Eviction
Melancholy Sabotage LP is available now. You can stream it in full below and order it here.
