"While A Magic Whistle's albums have previously oscillated between avant-classical chamber folk constructions, and minimalist homemade electronics-centered work, "The Solar Cell, "Andy Puls's 5th album under the "A Magic Whistle" name, finds the harmonious meeting point of the two.

This 40 minute journey finds Puls's homemade sequencer/synthesizer systems employed directly alongside wordless vocalizations, guitar, miscellaneous musical odds and ends, and a healthy helping of Puls's "Cascadian Sympathetic Steel," an instrument which adds an eastern-flavored drone resonance to the sound of a traditional lap steel.

The album was recorded almost entirely in a tiny handmade off-grid hut ("The Solar Cell," from which the album borrows its name) overlooking a creek canyon in the remote Cascade Mountain wilderness of far northern California. Influences of the natural life, weather, and seasons find more obvious expression than in previous albums, both in the literal appearance of natural sounds (recorded directly outside his hut), and in the organic and sometimes dramatic, sometimes gently meandering flow of the musical phrasings and song structures."-Public Eyesore