Sola Rosa are feeling refreshed and ready to take on the world again.
The Auckland-based groove merchants head back out on the road – around New Zealand first and then Europe in October – on the back of the re-release of their debut album Solarized, featuring four new mixes of their classic Don’t Leave Home.
The refreshments – one by a Scotsman, two by Australians (one a New Zealand expat) and a London DJ – were the best of nearly 20 submitted when Sola Rosa launched a competition offering four would-be artists the chance to earn royalties (and fame) through re-imagining the single off the group’s debut album.
“We weren’t really sure how much interest there would be,” says Sola Rosa’s Andrew Spraggon. “The song and the album both came out such a long time ago but we were really blown away by the response
“We got quite a variety of mixes. It’s always great to hear other people’s take on your music.”
The initial idea behind the re- release of Solarized was practical.
“Our distribution company rang to say they had run out of stock,” Spraggon says. “The album had already been repressed a couple of times and so it was a question of do we delete it, get another batch pressed or do something different. It didn’t make sense to delete it because it still sells, so it seemed to make sense to repackage the whole thing. We’ve changed the artwork slightly and came up with the idea of the remix competition so we’ve refreshed it somewhat.”
Sola Rosa have since opened up the competition lines again for remixes of either Spinning Top, featuring LA Mitchell, Promise, featuring Olivier Daysoul, or the instrumental track Lion’s Den, from their latest album Low and Behold, High and Beyond.
“We’ve already got a bunch of remixes for the album, so we are probably going to release a series of remixes over the coming months. Then we’ll probably eventually put out a couple of EPs or a remix album,” Spraggon says.
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