Situs Solitus - Situs Solitus

Situs Solitus

Situs Solitus
​self-released; 2016

3.9 out of 5

By Jamie Robash

If you’ve ever found yourself making up ridiculous excuses for why you haven’t accomplished so many of the things you want to do in life because you are too busy with other things then you’re going to hate Eric Zabriskie. Not only has the Syracuse, New York solo artist just released his first eponymous EP Situs Solitus under the moniker Situs Solitus, he did it while stealing time away from his med school studies. Yeah that’s right, Zabriskie is in his first year as a med student and has still managed to find enough time to make a dark and illustrious album full of haunting strings pieces cold and jilting piano and whispering vocals that often feel like breath on the back of a neck.

The haunting orchestrations on Situs Solitus stem from Zabriskie’s previous work scoring films from both America and abroad. But the tone of the EP comes from its inspiration, which was working the graveyard shift at a mental hospital.

Situs Solitus opens with the slow churning orchestration on “From the Shade” and begins to set the dark and nocturnal mood that Zabriskie has set out to create on this record. The violins slowly creak like an old ship out at sea. And Zabriskie’s soft yet ardent vocals lull the listener, not to sleep but into a sense of eerie calmness.

This sense of eerie calmness is perhaps its most haunting on the dark lullaby “This World I’ve Made,” which ambles along slowly with its taut dark strings cut with bright drops of piano. It definitely hints at Zabriskie’s film score talents, and is reminiscent of work by the great contemporary Polish composer Abel Korzeniowski. The song was inspired by a patient that Zabriskie knew at the mental institution.

​Zabriskie has said about the song’s beginning that  the patient had “described in detail the onset of schizophrenia to me, never knowing if you have awoken from sleep or into another hallucinatory dream...” This hallucinatory dream carries over to the ethereal guitar and wispy effects on “The Still Sargasso Sea.”
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If you find yourself in need of inspiration to get going on something you’ve been putting off in your life or if you’ve had a long day and you need a musical equivalent to Netflix and chill, Situs Solitus should be at the top of your playlist.

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