About Solsten
Artist Biography
Solsten grew up across three very different parts of Canada—born in Saskatchewan, raised in Victoria, BC, and living in Montréal for over a decade. Those landscapes are all somewhere in his music. He was a regular listener of CBC's Brave New Waves as a teenager, and a summer in Japan in his early twenties cemented the idea that music could be a total environment, not just a backdrop. He spent years working seriously in cooking, abstract painting, photography, and filmmaking alongside production.
His mother's death in 2012 pushed music to the centre. He went deep into the dubstep and techno scenes in Vancouver and Montréal, then traveled to Los Angeles in 2016 to record his debut. The 1960 EP came out in late 2017.
In 2022 his father disappeared and was eventually confirmed dead. Ghosts of Uranium City (2024), recorded at Eightfold Studios, carries that weight directly. Built on the industrial dub techno of Basic Channel, Sandwell District, Rrose, and Silent Servant, it got attention for how plainly it dealt with grief without losing its physicality.
Cold Concrete, Warm Waters (March 2025) is where the work opens up. Still rooted in techno and dub, but more candid and more sensual than anything before it. It makes clear that the project is moving past what the genre usually allows. He's currently finishing his fourth album and lives in Montréal with his two cats, Elizabeth and Henry (Jennings).
