Solar Effect by Duane Island

“The Italian thing, there’s something about it.”

The summer of 1981 was a legendary one on the eastern side of Lago di Garda. Daniele Baldelli was creating a new sound at a club called Cosmic, in a DJ booth designed to look like a space helmet. The dance floor was unpredictable, the future was still wide open; drugs coming in from the North hadn’t taken over the scene yet. People arrived sunsoaked, expecting a journey.

The summer of 2020 was a memorable one too. Duane Island - real name Dan Komanoff - was in Manhattan, back in his childhood bedroom. Days were long but he was mostly inside. The view from the room’s window was just another brick wall, although for a few moments a day, a bit of light would hit the portable studio where he would jam after work. His brother was around, too, so Dan enlisted him on keys. When their parents left for a weeklong vacation, the party began: they could jam louder and smoke inside.

Armed with a dropbox of disco breaks a friend had just ripped from his collection, Dan spent the week chopping 16 bar loops and writing bass lines under his brother's airy pad progressions. Italo gems dug from the annals of discogs had been the soundtrack of Dan's year so far, and the brothers used these sounds to transport themselves to that otherworldly lakeside scene that, save a few mixes and grainy photos, might never have existed at all. After a few hours of writing, Dan and his brother would take their jams to the roof to test them out in the open air and smoke some more. New ideas would float toward them from the other side of lower Manhattan, where the sun had just set, and they’d head back inside.

The result of these sessions is Solar Effect, three enormous and heartfelt club excursions that combine elements of trance, italo and disco to pack as much life as possible into a single track. The title track, “Solar Effect”, twists in on itself like a trip peaking at noon, pairing squelching FM synth lines with airy piano chords to get hands in the air, feet off the ground, and heads in the clouds. “Figo Dream” is an afternoon bike ride through a lifted and euphoric dreamscape, anchored by a pulsing bass line that changes course at just the right moment. “Olio” cruises back to earth by sunset, with cheeky keys and voices from dancefloors past beckoning for another go round.

Bliss Point is proud to welcome Duane Island to the roster with this stellar house offering, just in time for the sun to bring some life back to New York.

Solar Effect will be available on vinyl and digital download on June 11, 2021.

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