Solar Shears is Shooglenifty's first U.S. release. Featured on the album are Angus Grant on fiddle, Garry Finlayson on banjo, Conrad Ivitsky on bass, Iain MacLeod on mandolin, James Mackintosh on drums/ percussion and Malcolm Crosbie on guitar.

The UK's Songlines described Solar Shears as having "gorgeous melodies allied with killer grooves, an equal appetite for cutting-edge clubland stylings and traditional dance forms - while continuing to extend the scope and ambition of their sound."

On Solar Shears, Shooglenifty makes liberal use of distortion pedals and effects boxes in addition to pillaging DJ's techniques, working in all types of looped beats, scratching, electro-atmospherics and sampled 'discovered sounds' from industrial clanks and rumbles to snatches of telephone conversation and recorded pelican- crossing announcements.

Bassist Conrad Ivitsky describes the recording process for Solar Shears. "The album was produced by Jim Sutherland, like our last two albums, in his studio above Edinburgh's Bongo Club, which is great because that's where we rehearse and do occasional gigs.

Jim is a total audio pervert: if he can fry a sound he will. He goes through every single plug, processor and file available, and spends hours trying different permutations. You've got those thousands of dollars worth of equipment but Jim is very into unorthodox approaches to get whatever sound he is looking for. He has a whole array of toys and he tends to play with all of them. His favorite things at the moment are a small Tandy mike worth very little and a little cheap plastic red speaker. On the track Igor he recorded all the drums through it and then used various compressors, processors and equalizers to get a fat, juicy sound.

As far as the recording process itself, we came in with our live arrangements and Jim ripped them apart. They get multi-tracked, then deconstructed and shredded down. The album is typical of Sutherland touches, notably lots of sampled 'found sounds', such as The Shipol Airport and Berne Railway Station, which are dropped into the mix." The end result is a delicious musical hybrid that is intricately woven and densely layered with a touch of minimalistic technique.