Last heard from with 2021’s DeLores Session (review here), Portuguese heavy rockers Miss Lava today announce the advent of their fifth full-length, Under a Black Sun, also their third for Small Stone Records. To go along with the album announcement, the Lisboa, Portugal, four-piece are streaming the title track which also doubles as the record’s closer, which gives a first impression as much about texture as heft, working up from an initial strum and melodic vocal to a fully immersive, hooky push, to cap the record.

What precedes the title-track across the 52-minute expanse varies, and for a band who are no strangers to dynamics, it should be no surprise that different songs go different places. Some are more direct, some more sprawling like “Dark Tomb Nebula” at the outset or attitude-laced like “I Drown,” but the point is the first single is more of a lead-in than total representation for the work it heralds. More to come ahead of the April 25 release, which the band will celebrate by supporting Graveyard in Portugal the next night.

The PR wire has initial details:

MISS LAVA – Under a Black Sun out April 25 on Small Stone

Like distant moons spitting fire, Miss Lava forged their new album “Under a Black Sun”. Carrying a darker and heavier emotional weight than their previous outings, the band’s fifth album is set to be released through Small Stone Records in the beginning of 2025.

“It’s a pretty intense record. I guess our life experiences over the past years have made us delve into a darker matter. We explored new territories and had a blast creating this album.” says singer Johnny Lee.

The release of “Under a Black Sun” will celebrate the band’s longevity, marking their 20th anniversary. A sonic fire with many cosmic swirls that urges to be unleashed live.

“It has been a hell of a ride since we started rehearsing in a small studio in Lisbon back in 2005. Having this record come out 20 years later with a partner like Small Stone is the best thing we could wish for. Now we just need to get out there and play these songs live everywhere we can!” confirms guitarist K. Raffah.

This mystical rite of creation was the first record with drummer Pedro Gonçalves, bringing a heavier vibe to the band. It was taped once again with Miguel “Veg” Marques, who handled the band’s previous record “Doom Machine”.

“Under a Black Sun” is the successor to the praised “Doom Machine” (2021), “Dominant Rush EP” (2017), “Sonic Debris” (2016), “Red Supergiant” (2013), and “Blues for the Dangerous Miles” (2009) and a limited edition self-titled blood red vinyl EP (2008).

Over the years, the band has played live in clubs and festivals in the UK, Spain, Germany and of course Portugal. Miss Lava Lava even made a one-off appearance at the legendary Whisky a Go-Go in Los Angeles. The band has shared the stage with the likes of Queens of the Stone Age, Slash, Graveyard, Ufommammut, Greenleaf, Kyuss Lives!, Fu Manchu, Valient Thorr, Entombed, Truckfighters and many more.

Tracklisting:
1. Dark Tomb Nebula
2. Neon Gods
3. Evil Eye of a Witch
4. Chaos Strain
5. Woe Warrior
6. The Bends
7. Fear in Overdrive
8. I Drown
9. Blue Sky on Mars
10. Elara
11. Under a Black Sun

Keys on “Blue Sky on Mars”, “Dark Tomb Nebula”, “Elara”,
“Evil Eye of the Witch” and “Woe Warrior” by Miguel “Veg” Marques.
Vocals on “Elara” by Alexandra Quintas “Bebé”.

Produced by Miss Lava and Miguel “Veg” Marques.
Recorded and engineered by Miguel “Veg” Marques at Generator Music Studios, Magoito, Sintra, between April and May 2024.

Alexandra’s vocals on “Elara” recorded by Ricardo Quintas at QMusic Studio in May 2024.

Mixed by Steve Lehane at Rustbelt Studios, Detroit, MI.
Mastered by Chris Goosman at Baseline Audio Labs – Ann Arbor, MI.
Design and Artwork by João Filipe.
Photography by Manuel Portugal.

Miss Lava is:
Johnny Lee: vocals
K. Raffah: guitars
P. Gonçalves: drums
Ricardo Ferreira: bass

https://www.facebook.com/MissLavaOfficial/
http://www.instagram.com/miss.lava/
https://misslava.bandcamp.com/
http://misslava.com/

Miss Lava, Under a Black Sun (2025)

Portuguese heavy rockers Miss Lava today premiere their new live outing, DeLores Session. Earlier this year, the Lisboa mainstays offered up Doom Machine (review here) through Small Stone Records and Kozmik Artifactz and thereby pushed their own creative limits and songwriting processes — neither of which one would call lacking previously — to newfound heights, turning tragic personal circumstance into triumph of expressive craft.

And yeah, that’s all well and good, but how about some damn shows? You know the story there, sadly enough. I’ve never had the pleasure of seeing Miss Lava live, let alone for their new album, but damn, they bring it. With crisp audio production and a multi-camera shoot, the four-piece who after this said goodbye to drummer J. Garcia tear into tracks taken almost entirely from Doom Machine — “I’m the Asteroid” comes from 2016’s Sonic Debris (review here). It’s a killer set, and if they had any pandemic-era dust to kick off, I certainly couldn’t tell.

It’s the kind of performance that a band might ultimately decide to put out as a live album, and wouldn’t you know it, in between my booking this premiere and today, that actually happened. The ‘DeLores Session,’ which you can watch in its entirety below, is out today for Bandcamp Friday. More info and the always important purchase link follows the clip below.

Please enjoy:

Miss Lava, ‘DeLores Session’ video premiere

Miss Lava on ‘DeLores Session’:

When Portugal opened after COVID we just wanted to get out there and play. The guys from Psychedelic Film Festival reached out to ask if we could do a performance of two to three songs for their online festival Rock Against PTSD. We really love playing these songs. So we just went ahead, called our friends from The Quartet of Woah! and took our gear to their place at Casa DeLores. Then we rocked out these songs, way more than originally planned, with the help of our mutual friend and producer Fernando Matias (he did “Sonic Debris” with us and all of TQOW! albums).

All in all we had a great day among friends, drank a few beers and had some pizza. It turned out this is J. Garcia’s last recording with the band. It feels great to have it documented like this and to release it as a freebie!

We really like listening to the raw approach on the songs, with all the fucks up and everything. It’s honest rawk. Hope you all dig it.

Purchase link: https://smallstone.bandcamp.com/album/delores-session

Tracklist:
1 – Feel Surreal – Live
2 – I’m the Asteroid – Live
3 – Sleepy Warm – Live
4 – Brotherhood of Eternal Love – Live
5 – The Oracle – Live
6 – The Great Divide – Live
7 – The Fall – Live
8 – Fourth Dimension – Live
9 – In the Mire – Live
10 – Magma – Live
11 – Doom Machine – Live

Recorded May 1st, 2021 at “Casa DeLores” in Lisbon, Portugal. Produced by WH!, Pentagon Audio Manufacturers and Miss Lava. Recorded, engineered, mixed and mastered by Fernando Matias.

Special thanks to “The Quartet of Woah!”

Miss Lava:
Johnny Lee – Vocals
Ricardo Ferreira – Bass and Vocals
K. Raffah – Guitars
J. Garcia – Drums

Miss Lava, Doom Machine (2021)

Miss Lava on Facebook

Miss Lava on Instagram

Miss Lava on Bandcamp

Small Stone Records on Bandcamp

Small Stone Records website

Kozmik Artifactz on Facebook

Kozmik Artifactz website

[Click play above to stream the premier of the video for ‘Fibonacci Numbers.’ Saturnia release their new album, Stranded in the Green, March 26 on Sulatron Records.]

This year marks the 25th anniversary of Lisboa-based multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Luís Simões founding Saturnia, and the Portuguese institution of psychedelia marks the occasion with the release of its seventh full-length, Stranded in the Green, through Sulatron Records. A veteran of Elektrohasch Schallplatten and Cranium Music, Simões has always kept Saturnia pretty close to himself in terms of lineup, going back 20 years to the band’s debut, The Glitter Odd, and sure enough, in addition to producing/recording here over a period of two years between 2018-2020 and mixing last August, he handles vocals, electric, acoustic and 12-string guitar as well as a swath of other instruments — Hammond, Philicorda, Rhodes, piano, synthesizer, gong, chimes, drums, bass, various effects, keyboard samples, tampura and acoustic sitar among them. In terms of other personnel throughout the nine-song/56-minute offering, Simões welcomes only two others: Ana Vitorino speaking on the intro “Pan Arrives,” and Winga bringing djembe to the subsequent “Keep it Long.” Certainly any number of solo albums have involved more players. Simões even designed the cover art, with his own pictures as well as those by João Bordeira. So yes, a personal feel is somewhat inevitable.

Stranded in the Green, though, is as much about breadth and atmosphere as it is personal expression. It is not bedroom psychedelia, and those familiar with Saturnia — Simões‘ most recent prior outing was 2018’s The Seance Tapes (review here), which reworked older material — shouldn’t expect it to be. Rather, despite quiet moments like the beginning of the near-14-minute centerpiece “Super Natural,” Simões uses the album in semi-narrative fashion to portray a communion with nature. The pagan representation of Pan in “Pan Arrives” is fair enough ground for the beginning of the record, and while sitar rock and uptempo ’60s-fashioned heavy psych are the initial impressions in “Keep it Long,” the subsequent “Fibonacci Numbers,” with its vague keyboard impressionism, quieter melody and patient execution kept to an underlying movement with a simple tom progression during the verse, and the drift-dream-int0-mellotron that is “Smoking in the Sun” — which admittedly may well be the very core of the record’s functioning storyline, further tying in with “Super Natural” and second-half-of-album cuts like “When I’m High” and the closer “Just Let Yourself Go” — soon show that the beginning is only the beginning, as it were, and that Saturnia are undertaking the songwriting, the showcase of craft and melody and rhythm, even the arrangements, as a kind of ritual in nature. Stranded in the Green, with all its expanse and atmosphere, is effective in maintaining this overarching purpose.

And with the word “stranded” in the title, there is a modern, COVID-era sense of isolation as well. After “Super Natural” has swelled and receded and one-man-jammed its lush and gorgeous landscape directly into the clearer piano line laced with synth and sitar drone that comes with “When I’m High,” the pairing of “Perfectly Lonely” and “Butterfly Collector” recedes into minimalist backwards guitar and subdued cymbal wash in the former track. It’s more substantial than an interlude at nearly four and a half minutes, but if one was to place a bet as to which portion of Stranded in the Green was conceived and executed under quarantine — a kind of willfully meandering experimentalism that’s deeply personal despite the lack of vocals — “Perfectly Lonely” would be a solid pick. Whether or not that’s actually the case, I don’t know, but that’s how it reads, and with a return of birdsong accompanied by chimes leading to Rhodes (I think), rolling drums and a fluid synthy vibe, “Butterfly Collector” expands on that ambience with 7:45 of escapist immersion. As so many people did for so many months, it seems simply to explore the space around it, going for a walk, reengaging with the colors that go so often taken for granted.

By the time “Butterfly Collector” comes around, Stranded in the Green has already pushed the boundaries of a single LP — it’s worth noting that the Sulatron LP version omits “Perfectly Lonely” and “Just Let Yourself Go,” which appear on the CD — but the journey is the point, and certainly the shifts in arrangement and general mood are enough to hold more fickle attention spans. “Butterfly Collector” is the closer of the vinyl, and its concluding wash and minor-key mystique in the parting lines serves that function well, but “Just Let Yourself Go” manages to do well in summarizing the outing just the same, with a nodding rhythm beneath returned sitar drone and a bluesy lead line at the outset, synth/effects swirl peppering in, and more of the unmitigated instrumental flow that has served Simões so well throughout. It wouldn’t be fair to call the album incomplete without it, but it is one more example of Simões‘ ability to pull together a full-band atmosphere and still maintain the intimacy of a solo affair; the central dynamic around which the album is based. That is to say, it can sound “Perfectly Lonely” while still creating its own special kind of wash.

A quarter-century after its founding, maybe it shouldn’t be such a surprise that Simões is capable of engineering that balance, but that doesn’t make the listening experience any less satisfying, and for sure there is an aspect of refinement and continued growth in the processes on display throughout. It’s possible that engaging with older songs helped inspire Saturnia to move forward with these tracks, or that lockdown played a role there as well, but Stranded in the Green is that much stronger for it in manifesting its expressive purpose. There is an element of escapism — or at very least there can be — in terms of hearing it. One might be tempted to turn off one’s mind, relax, and float downstream. But Simões isn’t so much dropping out here as tuning in to the world around him, and that sense of interaction is as infectious as any chorus contained within the songs themselves. Thus, when met with its due consideration, Stranded in the Green is the kind of album that might make colors seem brighter afterward.

Saturnia on Thee Facebooks

Saturnia website

Sulatron Records on Thee Facebooks

Sulatron Records website

The ongoing nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, the varied responses of publics and governments worldwide, and the disruption to lives and livelihoods has reached a scale that is unprecedented. Whatever the month or the month after or the future itself brings, more than one generation will bear the mark of having lived through this time, and art, artists, and those who provide the support system to help uphold them have all been affected.

In continuing the Days of Rona feature, it remains pivotal to give a varied human perspective on these events and these responses. It is important to remind ourselves that whether someone is devastated or untouched, sick or well, we are all thinking, feeling people with lives we want to live again, whatever renewed shape they might take from this point onward. We all have to embrace a new normal. What will that be and how will we get there?

Thanks to all who participate. To read all the Days of Rona coverage, click here. — JJ Koczan

Days of Rona: Antonio Santos of Places Around the Sun (Lisboa, Portugal)

—

How have you been you dealing with this crisis as a band? As an individual? What effect has it had on your plans or creative processes?

Besides the obvious bad financial side in all of this as a band we got a lot of time we wouldn’t get otherwise to really write our songs without any pressure of having to go to work the next day. And that is probably the best thing out of all of the things, our hobbies became a full-time job.

With the creative process it has also helped a lot since everything stopped and it left a lot of space for the creative mind to take place. I’ve seen a lot of new ideas, whether them being podcasts, Instagram lives or new music coming up in these last months and the best part is that everyone is attending to all of it because people want something to pass their time.

In a general view I think we’re making the best of it and still manage to finish the new album we’re currently working on.

How do you feel about the public response to the outbreak where you are? From the government response to the people around you, what have you seen and heard from others?

Here in Portugal, I feel like in a way we got very lucky comparing to a lot of other countries here in Europe. Our government reacted as fast as one would ever react with such a sudden threat.

Everybody at first shared the mind set of “The virus won’t ever get here”, foolishly enough since our country relies a lot on tourism, and thousands of tourists enter our country everyday. But when it came people actually reacted fast and a lot of people went into voluntary lockdown, but of course there were those people who felt like it was an overreaction. But now I think pretty much everyone is being aware and respectful of the rules.

There’s an uneasy feeling around everyone we know, since we all work in the film and music industry, we really depend on a lot of events that can’t happen right now and probably won’t happen in the next year.

But being all creative people I think we’ll all find some way or another to keep going and adapt to this new reality.

What do you think of how the music community specifically has responded? How do you feel during this time? Are you inspired? Discouraged? Bored? Any and all of it?

The music community took a big hit, every band we know had their shows canceled and we were all obligated to leave almost everything in stand by. But I think everyone is aware of how hard it is for all the artists and people are sharing everyone’s work on their social media. It’s amazing to see so many people coming together to help everybody in need during this time.

Although there’s a little bit of discouragement, because we know we can’t play live, being one of the most exciting parts of being in a band, and of course the best source of income. But some of the best songs and ideas came from boredom and the need to make something, I think everyone that has the creative side should use this time to let it come into fruition. Everyone is at home and now more than ever people need the entertainment industry to help them get through all of this a little bit easier.

What is the one thing you want people to know about your situation, either as a band, or personally, or anything? What is your new normal? What have you learned from this experience, about yourself, your band, or anything?

Me personally, I was going through a really rough time mentally before all of this. And having to suddenly stop everything really made think and reflect on everything going in my mind and I got to value a lot of things that I always took for granted and I fortunately could channel everything through music, we were in the middle of recording an album, and luckily we stopped when we were about to record the vocals, which is something that can easily be done at home, so I brought my studio set up home and really took the time to record and write everything feeling like I had all the time in the world.

I recorded a vocal idea and sent it to everyone and we went back and forth a lot and I think that really allowed us to come up with stuff we would never had the time to do before.

We as band can’t wait to share what we’ve been working on as we feel like it has some of the best stuff we’ve ever wrote and hopefully sooner than later we’ll be able to play it live.

https://www.facebook.com/placesaroundthesun/
https://www.instagram.com/placesaroundthesun/
https://placesaroundthesun.bandcamp.com/
https://open.spotify.com/artist/6EtVFuD2ONPTRJ3rKnlUgi

The statistics of COVID-19 change with every news cycle, and with growing numbers, stay-at-home isolation and a near-universal disruption to society on a global scale, it is ever more important to consider the human aspect of this coronavirus. Amid the sad surrealism of living through social distancing, quarantines and bans on gatherings of groups of any size, creative professionals — artists, musicians, promoters, club owners, techs, producers, and more — are seeing an effect like nothing witnessed in the last century, and as humanity as a whole deals with this calamity, some perspective on who, what, where, when and how we’re all getting through is a needed reminder of why we’re doing so in the first place.

Thus, Days of Rona, in some attempt to help document the state of things as they are now, both so help can be asked for and given where needed, and so that when this is over it can be remembered.

Thanks to all who participate. To read all the Days of Rona coverage, click here. — JJ Koczan

Days of Rona: (Lisboa, Portugal)

—

How are you dealing with this crisis as a band? Have you had to rework plans at all? How is everyone’s health so far?

I was already editing and pre-mixing the new Saturnia album for a couple of months, so, as that is something I do on my own from home and there were no plans to play live at all, Saturnia’s daily routine hasn’t really changed radically.

There is a certain irony as this new record is an outdoors album, I recorded most of it in the countryside earlier on; actually some of it was recorded outside under the trees, but i’m now working in lockdown regime.

I’ve been in contact with André Silva (drums) and everyone else involved with Saturnia and so far everyone is okay.

What are the quarantine/isolation rules where you are?

Over here, in Portugal, the state of emergency has been officially declared; social isolation is the rule, you can go to the supermarket, bank, post office, pharmacy and walk the dog in the immediate area where you live in but you can’t move about in groups and if you are making a more serious movement you have to be ready to justify it.

The authorities aren’t being over aggressive with people but are acting firmly.

The paranoia meter is in the red, and although i haven’t seen them myself, there are places with drones warning people to stay home, a pure dystopian vibe that reminds me of Hawkwind’s Sonic attack, just disturbingly real.

How have you seen the virus affecting the community around you and in music?

This is a nasty blow for everybody in general, obviously from the health perspective; this is the kind of history book stuff you heard of of the influenza pandemic in the WWI period, but now it is immediate reality; everything is closed so the economy is suffering on all levels.

Music is moving even more online but sadly, there isn’t any life-supporting revenue in online music, so this whole situation is very negative and it’s going to knock a lot of people’s lives down, for sure.

Music and art in general are frequently seen as a luxury item, although it’s what is keeping people sane at home…

What is the one thing you want people to know about your situation, either as a band, or personally, or anything?

Basically that Saturnia carries on doing its thing with the present time limitations, and so should everybody.

I want to urge everyone to be extremely careful, follow sanitary safety procedures and act with common sense, respect and responsibility so that we can all be here next year to listen to Saturnia’s new album and all albums old and new.

https://www.facebook.com/saturniamusic/
http://www.saturniamusic.com/
https://www.elektrohasch.de/

The first thing you see in the new video from Lisboa-based heavy psych rockers Desert’Smoke is a warning that the clip contains flashing lights that might cause a seizure. Well, okay. If you have photosensitive epilepsy, you might then want to change your viewing plans, but even if you go right to the Bandcamp stream of Karakum, the debut long-player from the four-piece outfit, you’d only be doing yourself a favor. Elements of meditative heavy psych show up amid a telegraphed desert rock influence, bits here and there of post-Earthless careening making themselves felt in “Mystic Lunar Ship” — the track with the video in question — and others across the five-track LP such as the 12-minute centerpiece “Solar Jam,” which is nothing if not aptly named for the vibe it elicits.

Can you dig it? Yeah, probably. There’s no real pretense in Karakum about where Desert’Smoke are coming from, and as the band follow-up their early-2018 Hidden Mirage EP, they unfold the debut with a careful patience that offsets some of the inevitable shred that emerges. Issued by Raging Planet, the album starts with a 39-second intro “Smoke One” — I hope their follow-up starts with “Smoke Two” — and then is off quickly into the winding “Darvaz,” named for a burning crater of natural gas that’s been on fire in Turkmenistan since the early ’70s. Because, heavy. That’s fun, and the vibe is pretty quickly set by “Darvaz” for “Solar Jam,” “Mystic Lunar Ship” and the righteous-wash-of-layered-solos finale “Gate of Karakum” to continue to push outward, working with consistency of mood even as each piece represents its own sonic excursion, based in jams but not simply meandering without purpose.

They’ve done SonicBlast, they’ll do Cartaxo Sessions in February, and I’m sure there’s more to come in 2020, but until then, if you can watch it without getting a headache, the video for “Mystic Lunar Ship” is below and, again, if you can watch it, it’s kind of awesome.

Hope you enjoy, or if you go straight to the audio below, hope you enjoy that:

Desert’Smoke, “Mystic Lunar Ship” official video

‘Mystic Lunar Ship’ from Karakum album – out now! – https://desert-smoke.bandcamp.com/album/karakum

Video and artwork by Senhor & Warini

Exploring the world of stoner and psychedelic rock, Desert’Smoke presents an instrumental show which blends the power of rock and the contemplative psychedelia with the beats of a symbiotic rhythm section. A trip in this desert created by André Pedroso ROCHA on guitar, João ROMÃO on guitar, João NOGUEIRA on bass and CLÁUDIO ‘Pidgeon’ Aurélio on drums.

‘Karakum’ means black sand and it’s the name of Turkemenistan’s desert. There you can find the Darvaz gas crater, a crater of natural gas that has been burning since 1971.

From Lisboa, Portugal
Recorded, Mixed and Mastered at Lemon Drops Media by André Eusébio.
Record Label: Raging Planet

Desert’Smoke are:
André Pedroso Rocha (Guitarra)
Cláudio Aurélio (Bateria)
João Nogueira (Baixo)
João Romão (Guitarra)

Desert’Smoke, Karakum (2019)

Desert’Smoke on Thee Facebooks

Desert’Smoke on Instagram

Desert’Smoke on Bandcamp

Raging Planet on Bandcamp

I said last time around when Saturnia posted a video assembled from studio footage during the making of their latest album, The Seance Tapes (review here), that it probably wouldn’t be the last clip they did in that fashion. For all I know the Portuguese heavy psych rockers have the entire session captured, but for now, “The Twilight Bong” follows “Gemini” (posted here) from the 2018 collection, which found Saturnia founder Luis Simões in the studio for the first time with very nearly a complete lineup, handling guitar, bass, sitar and vocals himself while keeping company with drummer André Silva and keyboardist Nuno Oliveira, essentially able to record live for the first time, and accordingly reworking material from Saturnia‘s prior six full-lengths.

“The Twilight Bong,” for example, makes its sitar-laced way to The Seance Tapes via Saturnia‘s 1999 self-titled debut, and as the penultimate inclusion running a sprawling nine and a half minutes with keys and sitar, drums and percussion intertwining, it’s an especially vivid showcase of what the newer incarnation of Saturnia are able to accomplish, even though it digs back to a record that turns 20 this year. Simões has always been at the core of Saturnia, and to hear his sitar in conversation with Oliveira‘s Mellotron-style keys late in the track is an exciting twist on the character of the original track. The mission is still way trippy, but there’s a live dynamic in the recording throughout The Seance Tapes that a one-man-band would have an almost impossible time trying to capture.

Once again, I don’t think this will be the last time Saturnia put out a video from The Seance Tapes that was taken in the studio. I don’t know if they have footage for the whole record, but if they did and they were able to get it all together, it would only demonstrate the burgeoning, molten chemistry in development with the new lineup. One hopes that perhaps they’ll channel those energies toward further studio work on new material, but the truth of the matter is that if they want to let The Seance Tapes linger a little longer, “The Twilight Bong” is a pretty good example of why that would be just fine.

Please enjoy:

Saturnia, “The Twilight Bong” official video

Hope you are ready for a bit of sitar-Rock.

New video from The Seance Tapes. Enjoy.

Recorded at Colour Haze Studio, Reichertshausen.

Saturnia on Thee Facebooks

Saturnia website

Elektrohasch Schallplatten website

Somebody had the right idea. I’m gonna guess it was Luís Simões. When Portuguese heavy psych rockers Saturnia hit Colour Haze Studio — yes, run by the band of the same name — to record their latest album, The Seance Tapes (review here), they brought a video camera along to capture the process. This was the right idea because the band was recording live for the first time, and where it’s traditionally been Simões working on his own in multi-instrumentalist fashion handling guitar, sitar, bass, vocals, etc., this time he not only had drummer André Silva with him, but also key specialist Nuno Oliveira on organ, synth, electric piano and whatnot, tracking live as a three-piece.

This wouldn’t necessarily be a minor change if it was Saturnia‘s second record or even their third, but it’s their seventh. They’ve worked pretty much with Simões and various other contributors all along, and for the first time it’s a full band functioning as a live act. I guess Simões figured that if he was going to continue to push into new ground as the band had a six-album track record of doing, this was the way to go. It worked. The Seance Tapes is a collection of songs that featured on past Saturnia full-lengths, and even so, one can hear the new life breathed into the material as they go. It flows much as a live set would because basically it is a live set, played and then given further flourish later on atop the basic tracks laid down to analog tape.

I wouldn’t speculate as to whether Saturnia will continue in this manner or go back to the way things have always been, but either way, The Seance Tapes captures a special moment in their history, and as such, it’s all the more fitting that it’s caught on video and preserved in more than just the album itself. A video for “Mindrama” from 2007’s Muzak has already surfaced, but you can see the band in the studio below for “Gemini” from their 1999 self-titled debut. I don’t expect it will be the last clip that makes its way to the public.

The Seance Tapes is out now on Elektrohasch Schallplatten.

Please enjoy:

Saturnia, “Gemini” official video

New video from The Seance Tapes – Gemini.

Recorded at Colour Haze Studio, Reichertshausen.

Saturnia on Thee Facebooks

Saturnia website

Elektrohasch Schallplatten website