Saturnia : Muzak
It’s been a while since I heard from Saturnia. This Portuguese group started around late ’96. I heard their duo album from 2000 with moody progressive trance-psychedelia. In that time, Luis Simões helped me well to get some aquaintance with some important music from the Portuguese psych scene from the 70s, but then I quickly lost touch (see results of that work and a review of that early album on next page). In 2003 they had a new album called “Hydrophonic Gardening”, which I have not heard yet. “Muzak” is their latest CD, which is now mostly a solo project, with help from some musical friends.
The vocals still have moments of a dreamy Floydian touch : they sing like in a daydream, while dynamic, groovy, progressive spacerock rhythms push the energy gently and in a catchy way, almost like attractive psychedelic pop music this time. The percussion is already a world on its own, with bass and drums and slightly echoing trance-rhythms. The tracks have a widely ranged and mingled soundscope with layers of acoustic instruments (guitars, and some tampura, vibraphone..) mixed with keyboards (organ and analogue sounds, and some spacey effects), with never too far some additional vocals and somewhere, some spoken word.
Psychevanhetfolk 01/2007 Gerald Van Waes
