Solar Volume 2

Solar Volume 2 feels immersive almost immediately. Spiritual, intense and introspective, the music carries a sense that the intention is less to simply make you dance and more to pull you into a trance, beyond the physical and out of the present moment.

SoundsOfAce has built one of the more recognisable sonic identities in the Nigerian dance and electronic music scene. You know when you are listening to one of his records. Solar Volume 2 extends that identity while pushing it somewhere less melodic, more heavily tribal-influenced, and noticeably more willing to take risks. It sounds deeply indigenous and completely modern at the same time.

Some of these tracks do not present themselves as obvious club cuts and that does not seem to be the point. They ask you to sit inside them first, to absorb the rhythm, the textures and the repetition until, eventually, you have no choice but to fall under their spell.

That restraint becomes especially interesting on Shape Shifting, Ekpere (Pray) and Renaissance featuring DysleX. None of them are particularly interested in giving you one obvious explosive moment. Instead, tension is released slowly and continuously. There is confidence in that choice: in allowing a track to unfold without forcing a payoff, and trusting the listener to stay with it.

Amandla leans more obviously into Afrotech, while Egwu Ogene and ATICAL push the energy much higher. They are the most overtly physical moments on the project, but even at their most dancefloor-facing, they never lose the hypnotic quality running through everything around them.

ATICAL, featuring Deepercussion and Bush Dr, takes that energy furthest. Its almost Fuji-influenced character is particularly striking because it steps away from the more obvious Igbo influences heard across much of the EP. As a closing track, it feels like the project suddenly widening its frame, opening into something larger while still holding on to it's intensity before it ends.

The sequencing deserves attention too, because across seven tracks and roughly 27 minutes, Solar Volume 2 feels arranged rather than simply collected. Each track has enough room to become its own little world, but none of them feel disconnected from the larger one. That cohesion is part of what makes the more experimental choices land.

This project needed to exist. Not because it neatly fits into what Nigerian dance music already sounds like, but because it does the opposite. It makes room for something stranger, more specific and less concerned with obvious convention. Solar Volume 2 is hypnotic, spiritual and deeply its own thing.

More importantly, it stays with you.