Melancholy is often romanticised and synonymous with a brisk autumn day longing for a lost love; with Solpara, it’s a call to action. It’s a sadness of personally being connected to tragedies and rage at the failure of political entities to address social injustices. A call to disrupt and challenge the boundaries of reality, taking matters into our own hands if no one will listen. Solpara delves into the inspiration behind some of the tracks on his album Melancholy Sabotage, demonstrating how art can be activism.
Hi Solpara, it’s a pleasure to speak with you. How are you feeling today, and where are you answering us from?
Thank you for having me! I’m feeling good, answering from Brooklyn right now.
The album artwork resembles a surrealist painting. Surrealism often defies logic with its juxtapositions and symbolic and hallucinatory imagery. Does this artistic movement tie into the album’s themes? And what role does surrealism play in challenging melancholy through your music?
The cover is by the Lebanese artist Aref El Rayess. I think that surrealism can challenge the boundaries of reality and open our minds to alternate realities. I believe that this is essential to challenging melancholy, which is often rooted in the past and the present.
While the world was on lockdown during Covid-19, we witnessed the murder of George Floyd. You’ve said you drew inspiration from participating in Black Lives Matter protests and the devastating 2020 Beirut Port explosion that affected your family. How did these compounded powerful personal, political, and social experiences affect you personally and shape the narrative and sound of the album?
Seeing the videos and the violence of the police in general towards Black people during these times created a sense of extreme rage and sadness in me. Participating in the protests was an outlet, a response to these feelings, seeing the active participation of multitudes of crowds in solidarity and in response to these events. There was a clear juxtaposition of seeing and reading the news in isolation in my apartment and then being in crowds fighting for similar goals that I believed in. There was also intensity and collective grief, which I felt in the protests, in addition to hope and solidarity to fight for a better world.
Even though I was in Brooklyn at the time, the Beirut Port Explosion had a strong effect on me. I was in contact with many family members who were in extreme distress, and my aunt sent me videos of my Grandparent’s apartment in total shambles. These videos (in addition to the media videos) shook me. The disgust of the political situation, sadness, and stories from my family members were really hard to digest. I could feel the anger towards those in power who let such an event take place. There was also a solidarity movement and volunteers who jumped in to manage the situation as best as possible.
I couldn’t tell you exactly how both events shaped the narrative of the album, but there was a subconscious narrative of a huge failure of bigger political bodies to take care of their own people and, subsequently, the people having to respond and take matters into their own hands.
Even though I was in Brooklyn at the time, the Beirut Port Explosion had a strong effect on me. I was in contact with many family members who were in extreme distress, and my aunt sent me videos of my Grandparent’s apartment in total shambles. These videos (in addition to the media videos) shook me. The disgust of the political situation, sadness, and stories from my family members were really hard to digest. I could feel the anger towards those in power who let such an event take place. There was also a solidarity movement and volunteers who jumped in to manage the situation as best as possible.
I couldn’t tell you exactly how both events shaped the narrative of the album, but there was a subconscious narrative of a huge failure of bigger political bodies to take care of their own people and, subsequently, the people having to respond and take matters into their own hands.
You recorded the album during lockdown while living alone in a Brooklyn loft; how did this isolation and the mundanity of daily life influence your creative process?
It gave me a lot of space to create until I felt like the creative process was over. I could start and finish whenever I wanted to. Sometimes, I would write until sunrise. I lost all my day jobs because of Covid and was collecting unemployment checks at the time, and this allowed me to have all this space and time.
The title track, Melancholy Sabotage, starts with minimal production and gradually builds. Is this a metaphor for confronting and breaking free from melancholy, or does it represent how melancholy can disrupt one's life?
The titular track and last song to be written for the album, Melancholy Sabotage, brings in many of the themes present throughout the record. Some heaviness with pushes and pulls, but ultimately, light blue skies and a look into the future appear with the envelope of the synth opening up. Something has broken through after the drop and the receding of the drum and bass. The point of view shifts — it looks down from above, acknowledging what’s below: a resolution and a path towards a new direction has been reached.
Melancholy Sabotage is the longest track on the album. How do you approach encapsulating a complete emotional journey within a single song?
I usually compose without thinking about this aspect and feel like the track is done when it’s done. I try to work on the body of the track in one sitting, and the other aspects and edits come after.
This Time Last Year sounds like a beautifully enchanted lazy summer day, where melancholy gives way to mystery. How did studying German expressionism, Tarkovsky, and Chris Marker's film La Jetée influence your approach to crafting atmosphere in your music?
Thank you! Studying those movements and films showed me how film can contribute to some off-screen qualities where the viewer may still see something but also dream of something else at the same time, some kind of dissociation that might be present in some ambient music pieces and some ambient films. I was particularly interested in the French expressionist Jean Epstein’s concept of Photogénie.
We Don't Owe has a cinematically haunting, almost unsettling quality. Is it meant to symbolise the isolation and fear that can accompany melancholy?
I think it’s a protest song encapsulating disgust towards bigger political bodies, towards whom we might sometimes feel indebted, but we don’t owe them anything. So much neglect. This was amplified by the political climate of the time.
The track Eviction concludes the album; moving is considered one of life's most stressful events. Have you ever faced eviction or displacement, and how did that experience shape you?
I haven’t faced eviction or displacement in the proper sense of the term, but I’ve been in many living situations where there was no real choice to stay. I reached a moment where I had to leave the loft in which I had composed most of the album and move into another living situation against my will and, subsequently, into another place and chapter of my life. Eviction was also a huge problem (and still is) on the news at the time of writing, which also influenced this track.
You're currently on tour; what has been your most unforgettable live performance to date?
The release show in New York was really special and had an intimate crowd. Also, my friend Cirrus Sauma did a really awesome improv dance performance during two of my tracks. Some of my favourite friends and DJs, Bergsonist and Sepehr, also closed out the night with a b2b DJ set, which made the evening extra sweet. Additionally, my friend Mark Hepworth, who hosted the event and is also an ice cream maker and DJ, made a Melancholy Sabotage themed ice cream inspired by Lebanese ice cream flavours, which was really delicious.
Speaking of touring, being an artist can lead to some wild experiences on the road. What's the wildest thing you’ve seen on the road?
Back in 2015, I played at a Polygon night in Prague. The promoters rented out a huge room in the central train station, which was massive. The rave was really busy and had amazing, bustling energy. People from the show were also hanging out near the train platforms. Some were hanging out, and others were making out right next to businessmen in suits, waiting for their trains to go to their early morning meetings. That was an unforgettable moment and a juxtaposition of people in one place. It was also totally normal, and it didn’t seem to bother anyone.
As a Lebanese-American artist, how has your cultural background influenced your identity and the stories you tell through your music? Do you feel a sense of responsibility to represent or shed light on certain aspects of your heritage?
I’ve been visiting Lebanon almost every year since I was born, and some of the best gigs of my life were there. I was, in part, introduced to electronic music first over there when I was younger because it was more part of the mainstream and accessible than it was for me in New York (at least for house and techno!). Beirut and New York have been juxtaposed throughout my life, and there must be some unconscious influence there. The politics of both places and countries have also been omnipresent throughout my life. I don’t make a conscious effort to include SWANA elements in my music, but I believe that some of it comes through the percussion and some of the scales I use. I love Darbuka and I have used that before in my music and also remixed a Fairouz track when I was 16. I also unconsciously used an Arabic word in one of the songs I wrote this year (not on the album).
Looking ahead, what do you hope to achieve with your music, and what kind of legacy do you wish to leave in the music industry?
I hope to share my music with others as much as I can, and I hope that it evokes feelings in other people that they would like to bathe in and revisit. I also want to collaborate more with friends and other musicians, mix media and art forms, make more film scores, and play more shows!