THE SKY ABOVE THE ROOF

Solus3's debut album, The Sky Above the Roof, is a beautiful piece of music, in unexpected ways. The music sounds to me like jazzy inflected world music with a rock edge. The instrumentation is quite unique, relying on percussion, a harp, theremin and backwards piano (I'm not even sure what the last one is), on top of loops, an actual piano, and bass. The music has several guest vocalist appearing on different tracks, who are mostly female but there is a male throat singer on "Romance de la Luna, Luna, Luna".

Whenever I put this album, it immediately puts me in a good mood - it is one of those albums that has that power - while at the same time making me feel relaxed. This really is great music to play and just lounge around to. The drum layers are often repetitive, allowing you to get into the groove of the different layers of music and just enjoy the soothing sounds of the music, like the harp and the vocals.

To me, this album strikes me as a rather original one as well, for I've yet to hear another album that uses quite this combination of instruments, or molds quites the same genres together, and so on top of the nice, relaxing feel I get from the album, there's also that sense of discovery.

My favorite tracks would be the second (B5 Bounce) - the chorus (I turn the music up) just always puts me in the right mood, and it really is quite lovely - and the aforementioned "Romance de la Luna, Luna, Luna" - the throat singing really gives it a unique, romantic feeling.