“As a producer and mixer, Scott Solter has worked with Superchunk, Okkervil River, the Mountain Goats, Pattern Is Movement, and the Court and Spark. One River is a re-release of an ambient album he made in 2005.

Ambient music is by nature intangible, meant to evoke sensations and feelings rather than the structure and explicitness of most music. I started listening to One River after visiting the Rothko Chapel in Houston, and I immediately saw the connection between Rothko’s monochromatic paintings and Solter’s washes of sound. Neither is meant to be appreciated in the same way as traditional art. There is no subject matter in Rothko’s paintings just as there is no verse-bridge-chorus structure in Solter’s piece. Instead, both artists are concerned with creating emotions in more subtle ways than does traditional art. What ambient music and abstract art offer is an opportunity to experience art that isn’t trying to define the listener/viewer experience. You aren’t distracted by the form, and so can better experience the sensation that the art evokes in you.

One River is meant to be listened to as one piece, and it slowly ebbs and flows over its 33-minute running time. There are processed guitars, synthesizers, and subtle percussive elements. It pulses and runs like the river it is named after, and the end result feels natural and organic despite the digital tools used to produce it. The overall mood is peaceful and reflective. It never veers into new age cheesiness, and doesn’t contain any unsettling or dissonant moments. I love Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Volume 2, but there are several tracks on that collection that are truly unsettling; and I was happy that One River avoids getting creepy.

Mark and Laura Solter created a film called Twins and Wives to accompany the re-release. While it is an interesting visualization of the music, I prefer to listen to One River without the visuals. Part of my enjoyment of the album is what images and feelings it brings up. It taps into an area of the brain that most music doesn’t touch.

I really enjoy this album, and I’m thankful that Perth-based Hidden Shoal Recording chose to reissue it. It’s gotten me to explore more ambient music, and has been a wonderful contrast to the majority of music that I listen to. One River is an excellent album that fans of ambient music won’t want to miss.”

BlogCritics

“Scott Solter, one half of Boxharp and prolific recording engineer, producer, mixer, re-mixer and musician, reissues his 2005 album ‘One River’. It has aspects of what is con temporarily described as glacial ambient, in that it is built from monolithic drone scapes that move slowly and invoke qualities of sparse almost barren climes. As a piece it comprises guitar processed to bare recognition, tape, cymbals, field recordings and manipulated voice, although it’s production qualities are so heavily present that the main instrument would have to be considered as the recording studio. Solter’s press material would have it that he is exploring the space between Brian Eno’s ‘Music for Airports’ and William Basinski’s ‘Disintegration Loops’, although comparisons to some of the output from Glacial Movements would be equally a descriptive shortcut.

‘One River’ is a seven track album which presents itself as one long unfolding with the nominal indexing for motives not quite clear. However they can be considered as movements with a whole with ‘Tarn’ opening the affair as a slow build introducing the elements and developing the recurring motifs into longer cycles. The release to the aspects of lower bass tones to accompany the higher cyclical drones occurs late in ‘Tarn’ and is a focal aspect of ‘Ghost Trains’ along with subtle field recordings of trains and a few guitar flourishes. ‘The Great Cold‘ has an eerier feel with a haunting choral sound and the drones emptied of their melodic tones to almost suggest affect less expression or barren scapes, as the intermittent samples of bird cries sparsely populate the track. ‘Antique Brothers’ slows down the pace and gives nuance to the drones creating distinct tonal variations within the cycles and eliciting a melancholic feel eventually being stripped back to a low tone and stretched minimal renditions of the cycles. ‘Wave and Sepia Wire’ moves back towards a brighter aspects of the cycles which continues through ‘Cypress Road’ building a more solemn sound bespeaking portent which culminates in ‘The Palace Wedding’ and it’s long pristine versions of the drone cycles with upwardly moving effects and gleams shining through in a positive resolve.

‘One River’ has also been made into a video ‘Twins and Wives: a film for One River’ which is to see limited edition DVD release.”

Cyclic Defrost

“Though Scott Solter’s One River isn’t a new recording—it was first released in 2005 on Tell-All Records—it’s as timeless a recording of ambient music as could be imagined—and beautiful, too, I might add. Its title is well-chosen, as the recording unfolds in an uninterrupted, thirty-four-minute flow, despite the seven-track indexing of its presentation. What separates it from many another ambient recording is its timbral character, and in particular the steel guitar-like sound that Solter generates through the heavily processed treatment of the electric guitar. Its flowing lines reverberate so powerfully One River begins to sound as if it was recorded in an immense cathedral setting. A mood of peaceful calm characterizes the material, as if to suggest the lulling drift of a boat as it floats downstream, propelled by nothing more than the movements of the river itself.

Solter has built up an impressive CV as a producer and for having worked with artists such as Spoon, Pattern is Movement, Superchunk, Liam Singer, and St Vincent, but it’s another side of Solter that’s showcased on One River, the one that finds him acting as a member of both The Balustrade Ensemble and Boxharp, the latter with Wendy Allen (whose manipulated voice briefly appears on One River). Though, as mentioned, One River plays without interruption, distinct shifts in character do assert themselves as the material moves from one indexed track to the next. Whereas “Tarn” inaugurates the journey with a becalmed ebb-and-flow of delicate guitar shadings and soft bell percussion accents, “Antique Brothers” brings the ethereal breath of Wendy Allen aboard; elsewhere, cymbal shadings by Solter’s other guest, Desmond Shea, amplify the resonating character of “Cypress Road” before “The Palace Wedding” closes the album on a ever-so-graceful note. One River is like a single protracted sigh, a lyrical and and beautiful setting that stands head and shoulders above the standard ambient recording.”

Textura

Excerpt: “Scott Solter’s “One River” is a digital and cd re-release of this US Ambient musician/producers album that was originally released on Tell-All records in 2005. Scott Solter wears many hats also being a remixer (such as Hidden Shoal artists Salli Lunn, The Caribbean and other artists such as Division day and Neon Indian), while working as a producer, mixer, recorder with the likes of Spoon, Superchunk, Mountain Goats, Okkervil River as well as being a member of the Balustrade Ensemble and Boxharp. He also had a release on the Manifold label in 2003 called “The Brief Light”. The label has described this release as “exploring the space between Brian Eno’s seminal Music For Airports and William Basinski’s contemporary classic The Disintegration Loops. The music sighs and aches beautifully, gradually transforming with subtlety and grace, lulling the listener into blissful reverie” and I couldn’t describe it better…. Although the album is made up of 7 tracks and a running time of a little over 33 minutes, it works as whole piece to be taken at once. One word sums it up best and that is “Haunting”.”

Twiceremoved