Chicago-based electronic music veteran, artist, and multi-instrumentalist MARK SOLOTROFF will release his new solo offering, A Diagnosis Of Distance, on November 20th.
A Diagnosis Of Distance treats separation – from places, from people, from earlier iterations of the self – as a condition to be mapped and analyzed rather than a narrative to be resolved. Operating at the intersections of drone, dark ambient, synth noise, tape music, and post-industrial soundscapes, the album was built by MARK SOLOTROFF from analog synthesizer, keyboard, drum machine, cassette manipulation, and source recordings gathered across Chicago, Berlin, Mexico City, and Cuernavaca. The record rejects geographical placement in favor of clinical observation, naming the internal mechanics of isolation across five expansive tracks spanning over 50 minutes: unexplained pressure, the cold architecture of an empty room, an unyielding frequency, and a degraded broadcast across time.
Rather than approaching the project as a strictly solitary work, SOLOTROFF invited key collaborators – Isidro Reyes (Anatomy of Habit, BLOODYMINDED, The Fortieth Day), JR Robinson (Wrekmeister Harmonies, The Mercury Impulse), and Joshua Strachan (Vaura, Blacklist, Desolation Colony) – to contribute to specific tracks, weaving their distinct voices into the album’s bleak, analytical framework. The album was mastered by Collin Jordan at The Boiler Room in Chicago, maintaining a careful sense of distance and dimension within the post-industrial drone that SOLOTROFF composed.
SOLOTROFF follows these forms of separation not by chasing what was lost, but by documenting the empty space left behind. He tracks distance through its artifacts – the magnetic decay on a length of tape, the physical residue of source recordings stripped of context, the harsh resonance of a frequency that occupies a room after the sound source is gone. Rather than offering nostalgia or catharsis, the process becomes an act of deliberate, quiet measurement. SOLOTROFF operates as both practitioner and subject, charting a steady movement through external weight, structural ruin, unyielding interior noise, and lingering presence – ending not in resolution, but in a state of absolute, observed quiet: distance observed closely enough that it starts to look like silence.
In advance of the record’s release, today SOLOTROFF delivers the first single, “Dense Anchorage” noting, “‘Dense Anchorage’ serves as the entry point to A Diagnosis Of Distance. I’m solo on this track, incorporating source elements recorded across three cities while layering drones, whirls, and static alongside a repeating keyboard figure. There’s an obscured voice embedded in the soundscape that felt somewhat threatening in the moment, but over time it became a kind of souvenir – an artifact of spatial displacement anchoring the rest of the album.”
Stream MARK SOLOTROFF’s “Dense Anchorage” HERE.
A Diagnosis Of Distance was recorded by MARK SOLOTROFF in Chicago, Berlin, Mexico City, and Cuernavaca and mastered by Collin Jordan at The Boiler Room, Chicago
A Diagnosis Of Distance will be released on CD and digitally.
Find preorders at the MARK SOLOTROFF Bandcamp page HERE.
A Diagnosis Of Distance Track Listing:
- Dense Anchorage
- The Geometry of Separation (Feat. JR Robinson)
- Phantom Tenant
- Signals of a Former Self (Feat. Joshua Strachan)
- This Absent Room (Feat. Isidro Reyes)
MARK SOLOTROFF Live:
11/05/2026 Color Club – Chicago, IL w/ Mortido, Exhumed Corpse, Black Triangle Badge [Tickets]
11/13/2026 Untitled Fest – Nashville, TN w/ Ámes Sanglantes, Arzat Skia, Coldship Passage, Death Pact International, Frontier, Imminent Death, Viodre, Vatican Shadow, Lussuria,more… [Tickets]
11/20/2026 Fringe Records – Ridgewood, NY w/ Cruor Incendia, Desolation Colony, DJ Pieter Schoolwerth
About MARK SOLOTROFF:
MARK SOLOTROFF‘s artwork and music focus on the development of cities, the human body’s navigation through urban environments, and interpersonal interactions, particularly in an age of digital fragmentation. As the vocalist of the doom band Anatomy Of Habit and the heavy electronic band BLOODYMINDED, and the founder of the early post-industrial band Intrinsic Action, Solotroff has a longstanding presence in the underground music world. With over 40 years of experience playing analog synthesizer, his synth work has been central to BLOODYMINDED and Intrinsic Action. Under the name Super Eight Loop, he recorded and released 100 hours of lo-fi analog synth music. His synth is also an element of the dark-ambient group Nightmares and the Milan-based post-industrial trio Ensemble Sacrés Garçons. In 2024, SOLOTROFF co-founded the synth-driven duo The Mercury Impulse with JR Robinson of Wrekmeister Harmonies, releasing their debut album, Records Of Human Behavior, that August.
SOLOTROFF has collaborated with numerous bands, contributing synth and/or vocals. His relationships range from a four-year role in Wrekmeister Harmonies to live appearances and studio recordings with artists and bands including The Atlas Moth, Azar Swan, Brutal Truth, Consumer Electronics, Indian, Locrian, Plague Bringer, Sigillum S, The Sodality, Sshe Retina Stimulants, and Wilt. His synth work is also featured in remixes for The Body, Statiqbloom, and Snow Burial. On November 28th, 2025, he contributed the track “Terminal ’25” to Metal Machine Music: Power To Consume, Vol. 1, a 2xLP compilation curated by Shaun Cohen and released as a Record Store Day Black Friday exclusive via Sony Music / Legacy Recordings.
As a solo artist, SOLOTROFF continues to focus on tenebrous analog synth music. His bass-heavy soundscapes have been described as unsettling to some and calming to others, serving as soundtracks for navigating metropolitan terrains. Starting in 2017, he released a series of recordings as limited edition cassettes, later compiled into three 2CD sets titled Strategic Planning. SOLOTROFF has since released the solo album You May Be Holding Back (2020), followed by Not Everybody Makes It (2021). These albums reflect on themes of isolation and loss, accompanied by self-published books featuring urban and architectural photographs that expand upon the albums’ imagery. In late 2022, he released a 2xCD set, Return To Oneself, compiling a series of digital singles and a previously unreleased long-form synth piece. Solotroff released Today The Infinite, Tomorrow Zero in 2023, followed by In Search Of Total Placelessness in April 2025.
https://marksolotroff.com
https://www.instagram.com/marksolotroff
https://www.facebook.com/solotroff
https://marksolotroff.bandcamp.com
https://open.spotify.com/artist/1qzS0Txu14VyMELnNLjspk
The post MARK SOLOTROFF: Chicago-Based Electronic / Dark Ambient / Noise Mastermind To Release A Diagnosis Of Distance Full-Length November 20th; New Track Streaming + Preorders Available first appeared on Earsplit Compound.