My long-form on how I came to love ambient was low-key a love letter to Polar Inertia. I have all their releases on DEMENT3D records in vinyl, the first records I bothered ordering on discogs. Today I picked a track from their first EP, Indirect Light, released in 2011. I remember playing the record on my newly bought turntable, and turning straight to the B side to listen to Sole Star, but was surprised when the eponymous track started playing. YouTube never brought me here, and I had the bad habit of never checking the entire EP back then. I hence only had head of Sole Star and Black Sun, true only “real” tracks of the EP. Indirect Light is a recital, I don’t know where the text comes from. It is so esoteric, beautifully highlighted with a powerful ambient synth, and I find the end particularly poetic:

It’s under shadow and obscurity that humans grow
Through pains and times of doubt their greatness revealed
When all is magnificent, and shining
Humans lose sight,
By the fall of light is true nature’s manifest
When all is stripped down to its raw essence
We will bring about the ultimate obscurity
We will present this indirect light

Hard for me to pick a track on this album really. Sole Star can appear more likeable at first, a quintessential ambient techno track, very deep 4 by 4 kick, beeping sound every 8 bars, chords ever so slowly fading in, always deep in the background, subtly building tension, morphing into more and more complex chords. Some hats finally come after three minutes of pure tension, the march is on its way, the destination is a whirlwind of synths, blaring their relief until the kick finally fades away, leaving you floating above broken ice sheets.

Black Sun takes the same recipe, but drags it on even longer time spans. It’s funny because I remember not liking that track at first, but now each time I go back to this EP it’s my go-to one. I was probably distracted by its absolute boss remix by Abdullah Rashim, which was a lot more dancefloor driven. This probably did not let me appreciate the contemplative take of the original track.

Hope you enjoy this EP as much as I do; this is one of the records I am the most attached to in my collection. See you soon for more ambient techno goodness.