Sol Seppy

Following appearances as an auxiliary bandmember for alternative act Sparklehorse, Sol Seppy debuted her brooding, idiosyncratic blend of indie rock, dream pop, and indie electronica in 2006 with the solo album The Bells of 1 2. She followed a 2012 EP with the sparser I.A.A.Y.A. in 2018. Born Sophie Michalitsianos in Wimbledon, London, she began writing music at the age of five. A classically trained cellist and pianist, she grew up in both England and Australia, eventually studying composition and orchestration at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. After graduating, her early career saw her working with a number of Australian bands as an improvisational cellist, but it was when she moved to New York at the age of 23 that she was approached by Sparklehorse's Mark Linkous to join the group on tour. She went on to contribute vocals, cello, and bass to their U.K.-charting albums Good Morning Spider (1998), It’s a Wonderful Life (2001), and Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain (2006). In the meantime, Michalitsianos set up her own studio in upstate New York and had begun recording solo material, though she was forced to start from scratch when a fire destroyed all of her equipment and work. Independent label Grönland released the resulting solo debut, The Bells of 1 2, under the more pronounceable pseudonym Sol Seppy in early 2006. Fusing styles ranging from classical and folk to shoegaze and trip-hop, the entire album was performed, engineered, and produced by Seppy. She followed it later the same year with Pssscheeow, an eight-track LP that included two songs from The Bells of 1 2. In the six years before her next solo release, she contributed cello, piano, and arranging to Leona Naess' album Thirteens (2008) and wrote material for artists including Karsh Kale. She eventually returned with her own EP, The Bird Calls, and Its Song Awakens the Air, and I Call, in 2012. Any creative endeavors on the part of Seppy were soon suspended due to the illness and death of her partner and collaborator Alton Delano, with whom she had a daughter. Over time, she eventually began working on music again, and married Scott Minor, formerly of Sparklehorse. Teased as the first part of a trilogy, she returned with the full-length I.A.A.Y.A. (I Am As You Are) in 2018. Initially released only in physical formats and as a direct download from her website, it followed on major streaming services and digital outlets in late 2019. That year, Grönland reissued The Bells of 1 2, making it available on vinyl for the first time. ~ Marcy Donelson, Rovi