Solarstone

Richard Mowatt — known as Solarstone — is one of British trance's most consistently respected figures. Active since the mid-1990s, he came up alongside the original wave of UK progressive trance pioneers and his 1999 track "Seven Cities" (with JES on vocals) is widely considered one of the all-time-greatest vocal trance records, regularly featured on best-of-trance lists alongside "Out of the Blue" and "For an Angel." Through the 2000s and 2010s, Solarstone built a body of work — Rain Stars Eternal (2010), Pure (2012), Touchstone (2018) — that explored progressive trance at its most refined and patient. His sound rejects the genre's tendencies toward maximalism in favour of long, atmospheric arrangements that build slowly and reward focused listening. For a generation of fans who came of age on the harder, more obviously euphoric end of trance, Solarstone has been a key entry point into the genre's deeper progressive tradition. In 2012 he launched Pure Trance — a compilation series, a label, and an event brand explicitly committed to keeping the original progressive-trance sound alive. The Pure Trance compilations (now well into double digits, with each volume mixed by Solarstone alongside guest curators including Bryan Kearney and Vlind) have become a benchmark for connoisseurs. The associated Pure Trance Recordings label has signed many of the genre's most respected progressive artists. Solarstone is also notable for his work as a label A&R, mentor, and elder statesman of the British progressive scene. He is widely cited by younger artists as a key influence and as a model for how to remain creatively vital and artistically principled across multiple eras of a genre that has often pulled in commercial directions. For listeners interested in trance as a serious long-form art form rather than as festival fuel, his catalogue is required listening.