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Where, in the infinite void of cinematic ethers, late-night synthery and soon-to-be-timeless melodies do the influential draw their own inspirations from? Well, in the case of ‘Dolphin’ – Solarstone’s gravitational new single, its muse point couldn’t be more documented.
And it’s nothing to do with aquatic mammals either.
Inspiration, as they say, can strike in the oddest of places, and true to that, ‘Dolphin’ has had more than a dash of happenstance to its inception.
Per Solarstone himself, the track’s “a loose cover” of JB Dunckel’s (one half of legendary downtempo French duo AIR) tune of the same name. It came via a stray sound fragment from a departure lounge TV, where, post-Luminosity, ‘Dolphin’s original had snagged Solarstone’s attention. “Sitting in Schiphol, I Shazam’d it; and discovered ’Dolphin’ and ‘Paranormal Musicality’ (Dunckel’s 2024 solo album from which it’s taken). Having not heard much of JB’s music since ‘Everybody Hertz’, a while back, it took all of five seconds to get sucked back into it.”
Initially for his own entertainment, Rich crafted a rework, which latterly found its way into his sets as an ID weapon. At which point the internet stepped in and it came to Dunckel himself’s attention. Contact established, JB’s thoughts on the cover were relatively straightforward: “I love it!”, and from there its path to today’s release became just as simple.
Translating its piano and string passages into rich analogue synths, Solarstone’s built something more floor-forward than the elegiac original – though arguably no less sophisticated. The more he worked on the cover, the more he felt it was becoming a counterpoint to 2026’s mainstream trance scene. “That”, he says, “feels ever more flooded with cheesy bastardisations of 90s trance hits. Instead of cheap nostalgia, ‘Dolphin’ offers the opportunity for something less obvious and, I feel, more emotionally complex.”
You can find ‘Dolphin’ here. [https://blackhole.lnk.to/Dolphin]
Tracklist:
- Solarstone – ‘Dolphin’ (Original Mix)
- Solarstone – ‘Dolphin’ (Extended Mix)
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