Album Review: Ten East & SoftSun, Turned to Stone Ch. 10 Split LP
Posted in Reviews on April 20th, 2026 by JJ Koczan
The throughline on Ten East and SoftSun‘s Turned to Stone Ch. 10, the latest installment of Ripple Music‘s ongoing split LP series, is Norwegian bassist Pia Isaksen and guitarist Gary Arce, who feature in both bands. The Arce/Isaksen pairing, which has over the last several years brought Arce guest appearances on Isaksen‘s solo records — Isaksen performs solo as Pia Isa and also plays bass and sings in Superlynx — followed by the advent of the joint project SoftSun as part of the oeuvre of ongoing Arce outfits like Yawning Man, Yawning Sons, Yawning Balch, and Big Scenic Nowhere. His unmistakable tonal sprawl on guitar is as worldmaking as ever.
SoftSun have two albums to-date, 2025’s Eternal Sunrise (review here) and 2024’s Daylight in the Dark (review here), and since producer Dan Joeright of Gatos Trail Recording Studio in Joshua Tree, California, plays drums on the debut and the band’s three inclusions for Turned to Stone Ch. 10 — he is in the lineup with Arce and Isaksen there, but not on the second album — I’m going to assume “Nowhere Else” (7:37) “Open Shelter” (7:50) and “Emotional Overdrive” (7:26) were recorded around the time of Daylight in the Dark, and so while they don’t necessarily represent the latest from that three-piece, on whose second LP Robert Garson (who also recorded and mixed at Red Barn Recorders) handled drums, there’s no lack of fit in the context of this release. Across its five tracks, with Ten East contributing “First Light” (10:14) and “Slow Motion War II” (7:53) on side A, and 40-minute runtime, there is no lack of flow, listener immersion, or vast-soundscaped desert evocation.
Ten East, as a band, are a somewhat nebulous Yawning Man offshoot. Their last full-length was 2016’s Skyline Pressure (review here) on Small Stone, and the project goes back to 2006’s Extraterrestrial Highway and 2008’s The Robot’s Guide to Freedom, which were likewise fluid in personnel and the jams themselves. That aspect is consistent, but ulimately, there’s little in terms of sound keeping “First Light” and “Slow Motion War II” from being Yawning Man — the mp3s I was given to review are labeled as Yawning Man in the files; I point it out because that’s how close the two are sonically — with the exception, again, of the players involved. Drummer Bill Stinson, who also plays in Yawning Man and adjacent outfits with Arce, brings his same hypnotic approach to Ten East, and Arce‘s lush searching on guitar shimmers as distinctly as ever.
Having Isaksen on bass is a distinguishing factor for Ten East 10 years on from their last release, but it’s the guitar collaboration with Isaiah Mitchell (Earthless, The Black Crowes, Tranquonauts, Brü, etc.) that will likely grab the most eyes and ears, given the profile. Arce is widely and rightly regarded as one of the principal founding figures of what became desert rock by bringing post-punk resonance to noise-jam impulses in the 1980s, but his most productive years have been the last 15 or so in terms of output, and his reputation in the heavy underground has grown accordingly. Mitchell‘s pedigree doesn’t go back as far, but he’s among the greatest heavy rock guitarists of his generation, having played in Howlin’ Rain and Golden Void in addition to Earthless and sundry other collaborations.
It both could’ve been a much more awkward fit with his shred-prone style and Arce‘s more texture-based approach, but before it turns the drums backward after about seven and a half minutes in, “First Light” bears out a smooth meshing between the six-stringers. Mitchell is mixed relatively low for a lead guitarist — something Earthless fans certainly won’t be used to — but as his soloing continues its outward delve, that means it becomes part of the melodic wash set by the backdrop of Arce‘s reverb. This lets “First Light” find a resonance that is separate from the elements that comprise it, be it Arce and Stinson‘s familiar dynamic or the warmth of tone Isaksen brings to proceedings, as Arce and Mitchell interpret dual-guitar psychedelic traditionalism with their own sound. Is that what makes it Ten East as opposed to Yawning Man? Maybe.
You could melt your brain trying to figure out where one needs to end and the other needs to begin, but the question is ultimately academic (though fun) and secondary to the experience of listening. “Slow Motion War II” reaffirms the character and balance of “First Light” as it works toward a casual crashout, and with the required platter flip for the physical edition, SoftSun get underway with “Nowhere Else,” both continuing aural themes from where Ten East left off — Isaksen‘s bass and Arce‘s guitar, again, carrying over from one band to the next — and diverting to their own place, lush and mellow, but with a more defined structure and, crucially, Isaksen‘s vocals, which when they enter for “Nowhere Else” are the first human voice on the split. That’s not a jarring moment, necessarily, but a point of redirection just the same.
With breadth and patience in the execution, SoftSun take their time to dwell in moods like that of “Open Shelter,” which doesn’t have quite the same brightness on its crash as “Nowhere Else” but feels all the more dug-in to its exploratory melody for that. The concluding “Emotional Overdrive” finds a suitable largesse in which to bask while oozing toward the finish, the steady roll of Joeright‘s march giving movement to the guitar’s tonal stride. This of course is a far cry from the flip-it-around backmasked ending of “First Light,” and so Ten East and SoftSun seem to be working together rather than against each other to move the listener from where they are to where the bands want them to be.
Maybe it’s intuitive that there would be sonic consistencies when two groups share half or more than half a lineup. Turned to Stone Ch. 10 emphasizes these aspects as well as the differences between these two projects, one intermittent, the other still exploring what their sound will be at the time of their first long-player. For neither is it a moment that will come again, and so the documentation, the album, resulting feels all the more like a thing to be cherished.
