11 East of Elsinore

ADVANCE REVIEWS:

"Another magnificent piece of work."

-black_ops (UK)

ABOUT THIS ALBUM:

On June 21st, the Summer Solstice, Bipolar Explorer releases its 13th album - LAST LIGHTS. A double-album, it was recorded, mixed and produced by the band in France and New York.

So, a word or two of introduction about this new album, our 13th in all and our sixth double-album. Some familiar themes may run through it, musings about love, loss, faith, life, and what may await after. Perhaps more present than before is the idea of memory - in abundance, here, I think - and an element that acknowledges as we’re all growing older, our thoughts wander both forward to what may be beyond this life and at the same time to remember all we’ve known.

One recurring theme of the record, spoken and sung, is simply to come home. To me, to us, that’s not geographic. It’s not a spot on any map. It’s the memory of events, feelings and time, dotted throughout our lives - those moments when we felt the most whole, happy, fulfilled, our true selves - when we had the keenest sense of belonging. Perhaps, likely, mortal, we do not know what time really is. My thoughtful hope and prayer - with visions and dreams and even moments in life however brief but startlingly resonant - compel me to think time is not at all what we perceive just now, but something eternal, constant and non-linear. That maybe all these moments we treasure in memory aren’t in the past at all but extant and can be lingered and lived within again and again at will. We just have to get to The Otherside.

It’s that safe return, both the journey and arrival into a greater light and the arms of all we’ve loved and known.

As ever, we’re on the lookout for new sounds - new instrumentation, alternate tunings, different guitar and synth voicings, “every weird noise” (a phrase I wrote on our whiteboard in the kitchen) that we hear in nature and life. We have a huge believe in albums, obviously. We think records are literally records of where we were in that particular dot of time (that elusive concept, again) and tend to pull all of that work together as we find its cohesive theme, leaving behind other perfectly good tracks for another album because the narrative takes precedent, takes hold.

It all comes together in a way, because we like to think of these albums as soundscapes - blending elements of experimental and ambient music, drones, field recordings, spoken word and shoegazy anthems - into a kind of sonic journey. This album is split into two parts. Disc One: "This Distracted Globe" - which begins airy and lo fi before floating into ever more unknown realms, by turns anxious and ascendent. The distracted globe in that sense is both the outside world we find ourselves navigating and the uneasy mixture of fears and dreams awash in our own troubled minds. Disc Two is subtitled "A Better Place" and we hope details that part of our sojourn toward a destination that finds resolution in hope and light.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t say something about our continuing endeavor in the form of the double-album. I think it has to do with a couple of things, both of them a bit personal.

For years, I wrote for the theatre. Usually knocking out a full-length and a couple of one-acts each year or so. The double album has a lot in common with the two-act full length, I think. It feels familiar, a story unfolding. Secondly, I think we find an enormous amount of inspiration and ideas from the art world and from cinema. And if I’m honest, a lot of it comes from the French masters of both disciplines. I think I love and am inspired by the huge detailed canvasses of Courbet and the multi-layered storylines of Rohmer, Pialat and Truffaut, in the same way I loved and was inspired by the double-albums - Zen Arcade, Double Nickels on the Dime, London Calling - of my punk rock youth.

There’s always been something leading us to these longform efforts, I think. They thrill and inspire us with their breadth and depth and make us aspire to try find something like it in our own work. Harkening back to the theatre, in Tennessee Williams’s epic play, "Camino Real", his hero, Byron ends his operatic page-long monologue with the rousing cry, “Make Voyages! Attempt them!”, concluding, “There’s nothing else…”

In that spirit, let me close, inviting you to come aboard. We’re delighted and grateful to have you with us. Thank you.

With thanks, love & faith,

Michael Serafin-Wells

(on behalf of Summer, Michael & Sylvia)

Bipolar Explorer

New York City

June 21, 2026