Track By Tracks: Bruno Karnel - Villa Solitude (2025)

1. Leaving Diaspar: 

The idea of the title came while reading Arthur C. Clarke's 'The City and the Stars'. There is this futuristic, dystopian city called 'Diaspar' that keeps men sort of prisoners until the main character finds a way to escape. I thought it could make a cool title for an instrumental track, and I didn't think about it for a moment until I wrote the opening instrumental, which was influenced both by a Finnish series and by Kauan. And then, it matched!

2. Heliopolis: 

A song of hope and melancholy. The lyrics (in French) were written a long time ago, and there have been several different versions of the music. But this one was at last the right one, and it was obvious that it would be the single. The additional vocals were sung by Iryna Kulshenka.

3. Candlelight City:

A song inspired by the life of my friends in Ukraine, who have to use candles as lights when there is no electricity, because of the war. It happens all the time. I admire their courage and wanted to write a song about them but without pathos. I hope I succeeded.

4. Tvé Mesto I: 

A short instrumental (the title means 'Your city', in Czech). It first appeared on one of my first demos, and I thought it was the right time to give it a new life, with new sounds and new arrangements. It also creates a link with my next album, a concept album telling a story starting in the Czech Republic, and which will feature 'Tve Mesto II'.

5. Edepol: 

An airy-fairy track, with some Turkish influences (I play some saz on it, it's a kind of Turkish lute). Very fun to play, if you like to play in 10/8 of course, but Basile (the drummer) and I like that. In Latin, the title means 'By Pollux !', which shows the track is not to be taken too seriously!

6. Lightnings: 

This track is about how hard it can be to find your place in this world, especially when you are an artist and write dark music, like yours truly as you would have guessed. I share the vocals with my wife Sonia on this one: she always sang on my albums, but I had never given her voice enough space. I think I have now! Fun fact: at the end of the song, you have these beautiful piano/cello parts played by the two Polinas, as I call them: Polina Chorna on piano and Polina Faustova on cello. They studied together in Kharkiv, but I didn't know it before asking them to play the same part!

7. Okhta-Tsentr:

I wrote the text a while ago after reading a terrifying article about Gazprom-City, a dystopian town in Russia. I remember thinking then: this town is really where the world ends. Today, with the war and all that shit, I thought the time had come to give the text a proper music. It's obviously the weirdest track on the album, with psychedelic/motorik, prog, post-punk, and metal influences all together! Quite a challenge to play, but fun.

8. Vndadiem ou le 21h06: 

This track I wrote on a train, during some endless trip to who knows where. The title refers to the song 'Mare congelatum', from my previous album 'Hic sunt dracones', with this Latin chorus meaning 'the sea has submerged the day'. The first verses are sung – in French – by Ella Yevtouchenko, a great young Ukrainian poetess. It was an honor to have her as a guest on the album.