Solstice Equinox
Richard Russell’s collaborative music project Everything Is Recorded today announce and release Solstice Equinox - a new album comprising forty pieces recorded in four days between 2023 and 2024 at The Copper House, Russell’s West London studio. Solstice Equinox is the fourth Everything Is Recorded album and comes four months after the third, Temporary.
Each session took place on a solstice or equinox — the Summer and Winter Solstices, and the Spring and Autumn Equinoxes. Across these four days, a revolving cast of musicians, peers, and longtime collaborators gathered for fully improvised sessions. Words about the seasons were written on the studio walls; otherwise Russell gave the players no instructions. After the sessions, he edited and mixed the recordings into the four distinct selections of ten tracks each that collectively form Solstice Equinox. The lineup blends longtime collaborators with fresh voices, including Alabaster DePlume, Jah Wobble, Ibeyi, Samantha Morton, Laura Groves, Jack Peñate, Roses Gabor, Mary In The Junkyard, Georgia,, Sampha, Florence Welch, Yazz Ahmed, CASISDEAD and more. Each session was uploaded to Bandcamp and SoundCloud as soon as it was completed.
The Solstice Equinox album further edits and compiles the four groups of ten tracks into one coherent album consisting of the forty songs, at a running time of one hour forty minutes. Solstice Equinox will be released digitally, and on limited edition vinyl. Each LP comes in a bespoke, screen-printed sleeve, hand-crafted at XL Recordings’ west London headquarters.
The Solstice Equinox sessions came towards the end of a prolific five-year period for Russell, capped by the release of Everything Is Recorded’s critically acclaimed third album Temporary in February 2025. The album features an extraordinary roster of collaborators including Sampha, Florence Welch, Bill Callahan, Noah Cyrus, Maddy Prior, Berwyn, Kamasi Washington, Rickey Washington, and many of the artists involved in Solstice Equinox.
Created over four years (2020–2024), Temporary followed the success of Everything Is Recorded’s self-titled 2018 Mercury Prize-nominated debut. Uncut called it “an endearingly ramshackle album... by turns light, sunny and soulful,” while Clash described Temporary as “one of the gentlest records ever made about death... deeply affecting, like sunlight filtering through the cracks of a long-lost memory.” Meanwhile, a glowing review in Crack Magazine stated “What makes Temporary so captivating is its raw vulnerability, its exploration of impermanence, change and connection through a kaleidoscopic lineup of artists and musicians... It's a record that resonates deeply, long after the needle lifts"
