Saturnia

Saturnia started off in late ..96, founded by multi-instrumentalist Luis Simões. Saturnia was originally intended to be a free art communal project where friends of several artistic professions such as literature, photography, design, painting and of course music, could come and input. One of these people was Filipe Homem, then a publicity designer, who, with Luis Simões, named the project. The name came from the merge between a couple of things: the Saturnia butterfly, the planet Saturn and saturnalia, a natural/ecological, spacey/cosmic and hedonistic concepts. This relationship was fruitful and the fusion of music with image was symbiotic.This incidental association lasted throughout ..97 and out of it came the first Saturnia demo. In early ..98 this duo split up friendly due to Simões's interest in pursuing a purely musical direction, that fused psych/prog head music of the seventies with its present day descendant: drug rave culture of drums & bass and jungle. (It was in this period that Simões first cooperated with Francisco Rebelo both playing live and recording as guest with Cool Hipnoise) Saturnia then turned into a genuine two piece group, with Luis Simões on guitar, sitar, theremin, vocals, gong and programming, and old time friend and musical partner Eduardo Vasconcelos (aka M Strange) on keyboards. This line up brainstormed and out of it came the first proper saturnia recording in early ..99, unfortunately M Strange's unwillingness to play live made him leave and his replacement was found in the person of Vasco Pereira, a space rock synthesist/organist and fulltime vinyl maniac. Playing live for the first time on the 8th of april 2000 in Lisbon..s ritz club, the duo continued to play live, jam and improvise while Simões demoed for Saturnia's second sonic effort. This year, Saturnia also remixed three songs for performance rockers Blasted Mechanism (Simões would join them in early 2003 as as full time guitarrist/sitarist/synthesist). In the summer of 2000 Luis Simões and Vasco Pereira(who joined Vertigo Rising later) divorced due to musical differences and he was replaced on keyboards by Francisco Rebelo (friend bassist of Lisbon groovers Cool Hipnoise) due to the hanging presence of confirmed gigs. Late 2000 and early 2001 were spent finishing Saturnia..s second long duration recording.(Throughout 2001Luis Simões also recorded and played live with Portuguese trip hop pop group The gift) Much had happened since the last studio outing and Saturnia reinvented its blend of modern exotic space psychedelia for a truly surprising album. The glitter Odd. This recording was well received by music critics and head people and was spotted by Cranium music who released it. The Glitter Odd did well and Saturnia jumped right into the studio after some shows to produce the follow up. One year later, October 2002, after about twelve months of hard work and a profoundly spiritual year of yoga and meditation, the new album, a spiritual, inspirational psych tour de force titled "Hydrophonic Gardening" got ready, and after separation from Cranium, Saturnia signed, in January 2003, a deal for the new album with Italian progressive label Mellow records. This album was received by critics as the confirmation of Saturnia..s music solidity, refinement and sophistication. By this time Luis Simões joined the extremely successful Portuguese performance rock trance outfit Blasted Mechanism thus doing three years of life on the road and a Portuguese number one gold album; this reflected on the new Saturnia album (like before, produced and recorded by Simões on his own but this time with a handful of guests, notably Daevid Allen and Nik Turner) that was done during that period. The new album, released by stoner cult label Elektrohasch records, laconically titled "Muzak" sets a new vibe in the Saturnia cosmos going for an effective hi-fi sound production and no nonsense approach to head music. That is now…