THE HISTORY OF SOLSKA, SO FAR, JANUARY 2024
PRE “SOLSKAN SONGS”: SUMMER OF 2019 - JANUARY 2023
The name “Solska” actually has nothing to do with ska, though that makes for a better explanation than the actual background behind the name. So when I was 12 years old I was heavily involved in online Minecraft servers that had discord communities, specifically one called Continent Craft. Long story short, those guys got pissed off at me, and my account got banned from there, so I needed to make an alt account to get back in there. Trying to think of something that sounded “foreign” and whatever so no one would suspect that it was me, I came up with “RepublicaSolska”, which I think I got from a broken polglish translation of The Republic of Poland and then replaced the P with an S. Couldn’t tell you why. I only used that account for a few months because they got not-pissed at me at some point and I was allowed around them again. That account still exists but lays dormant today.
2021: So then years later I got really into music, specifically indie rock like Car Seat Headrest, and got the idea that I should try starting a band of my own. But the biggest issue here was I live in a very rural environment and no one would be willing to play instruments with me and write songs with me. Bummer. Fortunately I learned from Car Seat Headrest that you don’t actually need any of that stuff to start making music. You can just like, do it. But the band stayed a pipe dream for some time because I didn’t actually know how to play instruments or have any musical knowledge at all. That was until late that year when I picked up my then recently deceased great grandfathers old parlour guitar and started trying to figure out how to play it. I learned a few chords and songs, and that Christmas I got a classical guitar of my very own.
2022: Now I’d write songs and write my very first with words, “Red Blossoms”, around February or March and left it on the backburner for a while. I knew I wanted to make music but I could never figure out what I would release it under and went through several very fucking lame monikers, such as “Eyes Wide Shut” (sounded dope when I was 14), “21st Century Synecdoche” (based on a King Crimson song and my favorite movie, Synecdoche, New York), “Wallflower Synecdoche” (based on that movie and another), “Clairvoyant Synecdoche” (what) before my friend Aster (a recurring character you will see) suggested I use the old “Solska” name. I didn’t really like it but I had nothing else to go with so I kept it for what I thought would be a temporary amount of time. I got more involved in other music communities around the summer, specifically ones centered around Car Seat Headrest, and get involved in community projects like a communal effort to cover Car Seat Headrest songs. This brings us to the first ever Solska release, “Flesh Funeral”, in June 2022. It was a very very bad cover of Beach Funeral by youknowwhobynow. It’s gone now and no one liked it then. Later in the year I got some more equipment that would help me with recording on my laptop and wrote some more songs, mostly noisy feedback nonsense and me fucking around with the multitracking feature in Audacity. It was this time when I made “Lady” which would go onto “Solskan Songs” unchanged.
2023: I was getting bored of just writing songs in my bedroom and not being able to build upon them in any meaningful way because I had no equipment, and then, one day, my grand dad set up his drum kit in the basement. I didn’t know how long he’d have these drums set up for because it was the first time in years that he had set them up, so I quickly got to work at attempting to learn the drums, me and my cousin both, as we were both interested in playing music together and we lived together so that worked out for a while. We’d take turns playing the drums and playing the guitar with one another, writing songs on occasion but mostly just having fun.
“SOLSKAN SONGS”: MARCH - APRIL 2023
It was in March that I realized I would be 16 soon and really needed to get out recorded versions of the songs I’d written SOME how, and I finally had a way to do that with the drums and extra equipment and be able to flesh them out. So, I recorded a bunch of the songs I’d already written, made some new ones, and in about 2 or 3 weeks, I had a full 50 minute album of songs. Like, the kinds with verses and choruses and bridges on occasion. It was super exciting to me and I showed all my friends and anyone who would care at least a little bit these actual real recorded bits of my own writing and words and chords… it was very bad. Some people liked it but most just showed enthusiasm because I was a 15 year old artist. I didn’t put a lot of effort into it because I felt the need to finish songs in one sitting and I didn’t record anything to a metronome or anything and it was all in Audacity, which I would also record the entirety of the next album in.
This whole experience made me realize I have to put effort into something for it to be a substantial artistic statement that I was personally proud of, and that I really shouldn’t just complete all my songs start to finish in one afternoon. I wanted a real album, that people could put into their spotify playlists and show their friends and go “Hey, look at this cool thing this cool guy is doing”. Which brings us to the recording process for my next album.
“WEEKEND CHRIST”: APRIL - DECEMBER 2023
The recording process for what would become Weekend Christ started immediately after Solskan Songs was released. I wrote the title track, initially known as “Night Crawl” 2 or 3 weeks after, and would be developing it for months all the way up to a few weeks before release. It would by far be the most difficult song on the album to record. That summer I got my drivers licence, and would begin a routine of driving to the campground where my family stayed the entire summer at and riding my bike and eating meals, and then with inspiration I had gotten from there driving back home to record into the late late hours of the night. The bulk of the recording happened at this stage, but only a few songs recorded during this time actually made it onto the record (Weekend Christ, The Creator of Paw Patrol, Soulseek) but it was still a crucial time for my artistic development and was a lot of fun. My writing really ramped up when school started, and I wrote the rest of the songs from August to the end of October, with the very last being “Tyler’s Skower Hour”, one of the most ambitious on that album, which took the help of my friend Tyler, who goes under the name Starfyrox103, to compose the song and make it what it ended up being. I met Cecily Renns around this time, another prominent DIY furry musician, who offered to mix my album upon hearing “Soulseek”, which was released with a music video in August. It was a very exciting and optimistic time for me.
The album was released on Christmas to generally positive reception. It sold a lot more than I thought it would and got bits of attention here and there from different people and music journalists. It turned out pretty good, I think, though could be infinitely improved upon now that I was improving my recording work and making all of my music in something that isn’t Audacity. That brings us to today.
“DANCE!DANCE!DANCE!”: DECEMBER 2023 - ???
2O24: Release an EP AND an album. Pretty tall order. I'll discuss each of those in a section that's seperate from this, but the basic deetz are that I want the Album to be at least 30 minutes long and have the EP be around 20 minutes or less. I also want to collaborate with fellow musicians in the scene, such as MIDI Bunny and Cime and record some instruments and maybe do some arranging for them. Also want to take the whole internet promotion thing more seriously this year and want to better document this project, which is why this website exists.
2025: In May of 2025 I'll graduate from highschool and be able to do whatever the hell I want, if I got the money. This means... I want to be able to do a Solska tour around places in the south and east coast. If that's not possible, I'll do shows at venues as close to where I live whenever I can. If that's not possible, uh, fuck.
BEYOND: Solska is a serious musical project, as silly as that seems in 2024. I want to be able to do this stuff as at least kind of a job but if I have to get another job thats chill, as long as I can keep doing this. I can't gaurantee that Solska as it exists right now will prevail, but I can gaurantee that I will always be doing music, wether its under Solska, Girlquest2007, or whatever other dumb bullshit I'll be doing. But I definitely want to make this thing bigger than just me at some point, a sort of Car Seat Headrest transformation, if you will. Basically, I'll always be sticking around at some level, and you guys can't get rid of me. Sucks to fuck.