John Beltran is recognized as a pioneering American electronic music producer known for his emotive blend of ambient, techno, jazz, and Latin influences. Emerging from Michigan’s early ’90s techno scene, his acclaimed works like Ten Days of Blueshowcase cinematic depth and genre-defying style. Recording under names such as Placid Angles and Sol Set, Beltran continues to shape electronic music with warmth, versatility, and a deep sense of atmosphere.
Here he’s showing of his Balearic side with a blissful co-op with Sol Set, out on All Good Music.
Sol Set is a constellation of kindred spirits, orbiting the same radiant center. Guided by John Beltran — ever the seeker of warmth in the quietest corners of sound — the collective breathes life into decades of musical memory, coaxing it into bloom with reverence and ease.
Through the Fire drifts in like morning mist over still waters, patient and glowing, slowly lifting into something luminous — a slow ignition that opens the door to an inward journey, or maybe an outward escape, toward places you’ve only felt in dreams.
War of the Hearts settles in deeper — a dusky, fragile ballad wrapped in velvet and longing. There’s Sade in its DNA, no doubt, but also something more spectral — a chanson of heartbreak with the bones of soul and a voice that moves like candlelight across a darkened room.
Then comes the epiphany: Love Revolution — the centerpiece, the sermon, the call to move and feel. African rhythm winds with a house groove dressed in sequins and sunbeams, recalling Jamiroquai at his most cosmically aligned. It preaches joy as resistance, dance as communion — a gospel that doesn’t shout, but soars.
Finally, Maragogi lands soft as dusk. A gentle Bossa sway carries you home, hips loosened, heart lightened, smile unwinding with the last rays of sun. It’s a farewell without finality — the kind of ending that promises return.
Sol Set doesn’t just play music — they inhabit it, stretch within it, and let it speak. This is soulcraft in four movements, and it lingers long after the last note fades.
Links:
Sol Set’s Bandcamp
