SATURNIA – The Glitter Odd (2023 LP Sulatron Records)

RELEASE INFO:

Label: Sulatron Records

Format: LP, Album, Limited Edition, Black Vinyl (180gram recycling vinyl + Inlay), 300 copies

Release Date: 23 June 2023

I think I will start with a rhetorical question… How many of you out there still think that Saturnia is a best-kept secret of Portugal’s Psychedelic scene? The outstanding Saturnia is a secret no more… And if you haven’t done so, then start collecting all their albums, NOW… Here’s some exciting news: Saturnia’s debut album finds its first-ever LP vinyl release after 22 years! “The Glitter Odd” was released on CD in 2001 through New Zealand’s Cranium Music and it was re-released by Germany’s Elektrohasch Schallplatten in 2009 again on CD format. So, the year is 2023 and we must blame (THANK) Mr. Dave Schmidt of Sulatron Records for this vinyl reissue!

(Check our review of Saturnia’s previous album “Stranded In The Green” released in 2021 through Sulatron Records)

Saturnia is a Psychedelic Rock Artist from Lisbon, Portugal, a creation of multi-instrumentalist producer Luis Simões. The short but informative Sulatron’s press release states:

“Sulatron Records is very proud to release Saturnia’s great debut album on vinyl!
The Glitter Odd, Saturnia’s debut release from 2001, is available on vinyl for the first time, specially mastered for LP.

The Glitter Odd’s abstract beauty casts instant magnetism and Luís Simões’s trippy bedroom wallpaper defines the artwork and permeates the intimate and painstakingly crafted music, in a psychedelic tour de force that still sounds contemporary, but also untrendy, after 22 years.
The whole album was composed, performed, recorded, produced, and mixed completely alone by Luis Simões…”

All Music and Lyrics were written and performed by Luis Simoes who also recorded, produced, and mixed the album between mid 2000 and January 2001 at Butterfly Sound.
Luis Simoes: Vocals, Electric and Acoustic guitar(picked, bowed, and e-bowed), Lap steel guitar, Acoustic sitar, Bass guitar, Philicorda and Hammond organ, Synthesizer, Theremin, Gong, Chimes, Sampled keyboards, and Sequencing.

“The Glitter Odd” kicks off with “Chrysalis”, a trippy sitar-laced tune with a mind-bending psychedelic melody and the “needed” psych-electronic-trippy effects, making this track ideal from the main theme of a cult Spy film from the 60s! “Bliss” is a slower tune, deeply psych-effected with a kind of blurry mind-expanding stoned (no stoner!) atmos! This is homemade dream-a-delia at its best! “Still Life” is a cool track with a mesmerizing cinematic feel, blending tropicalia, trip-hop, psychedelia, and spacey effects creating a dark misty but extremely colorful soundscape, you may call this Dark Trip-a-Delia! The next one “A Trick Of The Light” is mixed with the previous one, with a more “grounded” start, lots of birds singing, and sounds from Nature, slowly becoming a weird mind-blowing studio experimental futuristic theme comprising synths, birds, and theremin, wow! “Azimuth” closes the first side of the LP, though the experimentation of the previous track is over, the scenery remains slow and quite psychedelic with hazy buried and kind of sleepy vocals, it feels like entering s huge warmhole, in Space or in the Ground doesn’t really matter, trying desperately to reach the desired faraway gate of the Mynd… Side “B” opens with “Menadel”, slow trip-hop beats, and effected synths creating a futuristic Psych anthem where you get the feeling that you finally managed to open that Gate, facing the first morning light of a never-seen-before Horizon… “Organo” has a trippy melody played by the Hammond that blends with Spacey electronic effects creating a tri-hop-psych musical environment, quite cinematic I must say. “Borealis” is another cool futuristic and cinematic track that uses a trippy space-synth theme with lots of winds, Morse signals, and space birds… Eventually, the album comes to an end with the self-titled “The Glitter Odd”, a weird Spacey Experiment, deeply electronically flavored and kind of creepy-like… In conclusion, “The Glitter Odd” is a damn fine cool contemporary-Psych album, an album that laid the groundwork/foundations for the future “works” of Saturnia… An album that could have been originally released in 1991, or 2001, or 2021, or 2041… “The Glitter Odd” is an album with No Expiration Date! Dig it? TimeLord Michalis

Tracklist