Here’s another excellent review from Miles.
I got into Emeralds a little bit after the release of the overwhelmingly beautiful What Happened. Its ambient buzzing and shimmering synths made me a fan just as I realized they were playing a festival 2 hours away from me in New York that had just sold out. After kicking myself in the ass I decided to check out some more of their catalog. These 3 guys realized their potential on What Happened, but it’s on the earlier album Solar Bridge you can hear a band with a tremendous amount of potential building towards something grand. For anyone wanting to look further into Emeralds, looking back on their discography can be daunting considering how prolific they’ve been, but this is a great place to start. It is difficult to describe such formless music, but the best way I can describe Solar Bridge is it is an album that sounds exactly like the images its title brings to mind. It’s the musical equivalent of staring at the sun. It consists of two tracks that are some of the best and most absorbing drone pieces I’ve heard. It is an album that completely envelopes you in its blurry warmth, and its brevity keeps the album concise and strong, there is not a wasted moment to be found. The earliest albums I’ve heard by Emeralds such as Allegory of Allergies tend to be more ambient, but this album is where they begin adding more dynamics to create a more ambitious sound that expanded even more onWhat Happened. The second half of “Magic” is wonderful with its synths bubbling away over the drone. “The Quaking Mess” is my favorite track of the two beginning innocently as the gentle guitar wafts through the gorgeous haze; it eventually builds and builds into a blissful blast of noise. Solar Bridge is a tremendous album, and with a pair of headphones one that you can get lost in.
Ducks Battle Satan 