Solomon Grey Solomon Grey

Album info

Album-Release:
2016

HRA-Release:
17.03.2016

Label: Decca

Genre: Electronic

Subgenre: Electro-Pop

Artist: Solomon Grey

Album including Album cover

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  • 1Right Now01:13
  • 2Epitaph04:36
  • 3Sweet 8404:21
  • 4Last Century Man05:00
  • 5Electric Baby05:09
  • 6Broken Light03:09
  • 7The Rift02:02
  • 8See You There05:01
  • 9Slow Motion Picture04:38
  • 10Gascarene Sound05:36
  • 11Hidden Planes05:16
  • 12Choir To The Wild05:34
  • Total Runtime51:35

Info for Solomon Grey

The release then of Solomon Grey’s self-titled debut album on March 18th marks a milestone on a fifteen-year journey which has taken the band from the UK, to Ireland, Australia and now back home to London. Released by Decca Records the album is a collection of alternative electronic pop songs that serve as the soundtrack to a journey of persistence and determination by musicians and composers Tom Kingston and Joe Wilson.

Solomon Grey’s Wilson and Kingston initially met playing in covers bands in Oxford before relocating to London. After a few years of writing together, it was only after writing ‘Last Century Man’ that they felt they had a sound they could call their own. However, finding it hard to dedicate time to the project and with Tom now battling a severe illness the pair decided to pack up and relocate to a remote corner of County Cork, Ireland.

Living beside the Atlantic Ocean, they began many of the songs that form the basis of this debut, including ‘Gascarene Sound’ and ‘Choir To The Wild.’ It sounds idyllic but the isolation was deafening and with Tom’s illness worsening, their stay was cut short.

Shortly afterwards a family bereavement uprooted Tom permanently to the Australian outback. Determined to continue the project they had started, Joe joined him in the rural isolation of New South Wales. As Tom slowly recovered his health, new songs such as ‘Electric Baby’, ‘Epitaph’ and first single from the record ‘Sweet 84’ took on new meanings reflecting on the lives they had left behind. Production on the tracks was refined from listening back to mixes whilst driving along the long straight roads at night.

At the tail end of 2012 Solomon Grey returned to London to show the world their music. With a fantastic initial reaction it wasn’t long before the TV and Film world took notice and commissioned the band to write for a variety of projects including BBC/HBO’s The Casual Vacancy – with the music released as part of a collection of their work to date on their ‘Selected Works’ compilation.

The duo continued to write, adding ‘See You There’, ‘Broken Light’ and ‘The Rift’ to complete the record. It is an emotive, somatic and diverse body of work that encapsulates the journey and transformation undertaken by Tom Kingston and Joe Wilson. With the metamorphosis now complete the eponymous LP marks the first chapter in the story of Solomon Grey.

Tom Kingston, vocals, keyboards, samples, electronics
Joe Wilson, vocals, keyboards, samples, electronics


Solomon Grey
Understanding London-based duo Joe Wilson and Tom Kingston aka Solomon Grey requires ditching the usual definition of a band. No neat genre exists in to which they fit. No sound is out of bounds. You’re as likely to find them capturing field recordings as being in the studio sculpting beats.

Think of Solomon Grey as a sonic brand rather than band and you’ll grasp how they can be both acclaimed soundtrack producers (recently, of the BBC’s three-part drama The Casual Vacancy, based on J.K. Rowling’s book) and a boundary-pushing pop act (Zane Lowe described their debut single, Gen V, as the future of Radio 1). Solomon Grey don’t differentiate between the roles – each inspires the other, often they grow from the same stems, with the aesthetic the same. Rich atmospherics, a cinematic shimmer, classical and orchestral influences and a meticulous attention to detail are their trademarks.

Solomon Grey first came to public attention at the tail end of 2012, when Firechild appeared online, with no information about the band behind it. The ecstatic reaction to the track led to a deal with Black Butter which, in 2013, released two double-sided singles, including debut single Gen V, that saw Solomon Grey hailed one of Britain’s most exciting new electronic acts.

By the time Firechild arrived, the pair had been pushed to breaking point. Following some time spent together on the West Coast of Ireland Tom was now living in rural Australia, recovering from a long illness helping his soon-to-be wife run a 2300 acre sheep and wheat farm following the death of her father. Joe was in London, trying to scrape together the money to visit Australia on a regular basis to finish what the pair were so close to completing.

“It was a crazy time,” says Tom. “There I was, a vegetarian, in the outback with 3000 sheep, with no idea how long I’d be there for. My wife was expecting our first child and I was waiting for Joe to come over. There was a moment when we wondered if we could carry on. But we both knew we’d made music that was worth pursuing. Plus, my illness was a wake-up call. I wanted to throw all the energy I had in to the one thing I always wanted to do with my life. We refused to give up.”

Solomon Grey’s two stubborn, like-minded souls first met in Oxford when Joe was still at school and Tom was at university studying philosophy. They moved to London and began making music inspired by Drum’n’bass and British trip hop (Portishead, Massive Attack, Zero 7, early Ninja Tunes). However Solomon Grey only started to take shape at the end of the Noughties, when they found their sound with Last Century Man. “It took us years to get that song right,” says Joe.

The release of debut single Gen V was supposed to begin the slow build to Solomon Grey’s debut ‘pop’ album, but their soundtrack work put paid to those plans. First, the Irish Tourist Board hired them to soundtrack a film of The Wild Atlantic Way, a 2500km continuous coast road up the west coast of Ireland. Next, they recorded the soundtrack for a BFI-funded film called Gozo, due for release in 2016. Then came The Casual Vacancy call.

The recent Selected Works mini-album and Selected Features EP documents Solomon Grey’s journey so far with most of the music featured in The Casual Vacancy. No two songs on Selected Works sound the same, but all are instantly, obviously Solomon Grey. From the sensual, soulful, female-fronted Twilight to the hypnotically soothing Choir to The Wild via haunting, honeyed, strings-soaked Miradors and the propulsive beats-backed Firechild, Selected Works is best described as beautiful music that doesn’t play by pop’s regular rules.

This album contains no booklet.

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