Faex Optim :: Solar Drift (Touched Music)

Faex Optim channels his gift for luminous, emotive electronics into a radiant new chapter with Touched Music, crafting an ambient journey whose every shimmer, drift, and pulse feels like a quiet beacon of hope.

Hope carried on gentle waves

It was inevitable that Edinburgh-based wave weaver Wesley MacDonald (aka Faex Optim) would find his way to Touched Music, a home where gifted electronic artists share luminous soundscapes in support of MacMillan Cancer Support. This celestial route has MacDonald shaping gentle ambient flutter, beginning with the saccharine bleeps of “Beerdrunk Souls.” Renowned for introspective, melodic flow, each composition drifts in a graceful balance of motion and emotion.

Silky calm in “Monomial” meets technoid finesse in “Dancer’s Lament,” lifting spirits and letting minutes dissolve as if they never existed. These radiant sonic passages feel carefully woven, nurturing, and deep. The latter half of Solar Drift welcomes collaborators who reinterpret Faex Optim’s work with vivid imagination. Sevendeaths expands “Beerdrunk Souls” into a vast plateau, while Concretism’s take on “Magic and Realism” ebbs and glides with a subtle sci-fi shimmer. Heogen (aka label head Min-Y-Llan collaboration with Igloo favorite exm) lifts the saturated grains of “Lucky Charm” to cinematic heights, and Yunx closes with a refined, minimal reading of “Monomial,” adding micro-detailed motion and sleek mechanics to an already glowing synth swell.

This impactful album carries a message of hope and solace amid surrounding darkness—an IDM lantern guiding listeners across memories and futures alike, gently reassuring that everything, in the end, will be okay.

 Solar Drift is available on Touched Music. [Bandcamp]