SOLARCADE MUSIC

Profile

Solarcade is the musical partnership between vocalist Paul Van and guitarist Pomilla. They are musically comparable to Depeche Mode and the Raveonettes in their use of outside musicians to fill out their sound. As a result, Van and Pomilla’s eight-year collaboration has yielded some achingly beautiful music. Their cinematic, nuanced compositions have attracted the attention of The Killers’ Brandon Flowers, who personally selected Solarcade to open select dates for his band’s arena tour in 2007.

Van, whose baritenor voice has been compared to that of Peter Gabriel draws much of his musical inspiration from an interesting source. The singer, who emigrated from South Africa at the age of 16, describes his childhood: "Growing up, my archaeologist mother was always talking about different cultures and ways of living while my brother, an expert on Shakespeare, would be talking about the timeless truths and universal themes of Shakespeare. One of the reasons I am drawn to composing and performing is that it allows me to explore these different life themes and possibilities and to share them.”

Pomilla, the other half of Solarcade, hails from Houston, TX. Pomilla's guitar style has been compared with ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons and U2’s The Edge; these greats also happen to be two of his biggest inspirations. Formerly on the fast track to a career with a bachelors in criminal justice and working death row in Texas as a Correctional Officer, Pomilla could not silence the riffs that played in his head. "They just come to me, and I have to play them out until I get them down.”

It is a testament to the vibrancy of L.A.’s music scene that two driven musicians from different corners of the world found in each other their perfect missing piece.