Solar Bears make their second Comedown Sunday appearance with their achingly beautiful remix of How To Dress Well's Suicide Dream 3. Vocoders, sustained strings, and minimal bass take the original from orchestral filler piece to a cosmic epiphany. Deliberate and haunting, it feels like floating prostrate through space, gliding listlessly towards infinity.
Suicide Dream 3 (Solar Bears Remix) - How To Dress Well
This week’s Comedown Sunday comes to you courtesy of Ireland’s Solar Bears and Greece’s Keep Shelly in Athens1. Cub is a beautiful little song, at just under 3 minutes it’s reminiscent of Elizabethan consort/early Baroque lute music, with a simple, plucked guitar line undercut by delicate panpipes. While Solar Bears aren’t musicians who fall into the ‘ambient’ genre such as it is normally defined, this song is distinctly ‘ambient’ to me in that in conjures a distinct, crystal clear vision and mood every time I hear it: it glimmers and flows like a lazy river, sparkling in the sunlight and rippled by the most delicate breeze. The Keep Shelly In Athens Remix takes this ambient quality and turns it ethereal, stretching the song to almost twice the original run time, and decorating it with unintelligible vocal samples, otherworldly synths, and a strong kick. If the original is a lazy river, the KSIA remix is the waterfall. The understated beauty of the original Cub serves as the perfect end to the weekend, which the glittering jubilation of the remix is an excellent kick start to the week ahead.
Cub comes from Solar Bears' 2010 LP, She Was Coloured In. Buy the album here on Juno.
Cub--Solar Bears
Cub (Keep Shelly In Athens Remix)--Solar Bears
