Saturnia started in late 96, founded by multi-instrumentalist Luis Simoes, it was originally intended to be a communal project where friends of different artistic areas such as literature, photography, design, and music, could come and input. One of these people was Filipe Homem, then a designer, who, with Luis Simoes, named the project. The name is the merge between: the Saturnia moth, the planet Saturn and saturnalia, a natural/ecological, spacey/cosmic and hedonistic concept. This relationship was fruitful and the fusion of music with image was symbiotic originating the first Saturnia demo. In early 98 this duo split up friendly due to Simoess interest in taking 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. Saturnia then turned into a genuine two-piece group, with Luis Simoes on guitar, sitar, theremin, vocals, gong and sequencing, and M Strange on keyboards. This line up brainstormed and out of it came the first proper Saturnia recording in early 99, unfortunately M Stranges unwillingness to play live made him leave and his replacement was found in Vasco Pereira, a space rock synthesist/organist. After Saturnias first gig, on the 8th of april 2000 in Lisbons Ritz club, the duo continued to play live, while Simoes demoed for Saturnias second sonic effort. This year, Simoes also remixed three songs for performance band Blasted Mechanism (Simoes would join them in early 2003 as guitarrist/sitarist/synthesist). In the summer of 2000 Luis Simoes and Vasco Pereira divorced and he was replaced on keyboards by Francisco Rebelo (of Lisbon groovers Cool hipnoise). Late 2000 and early 2001 were spent finishing Saturnias second long duration recording. (Throughout 2001 Luis Simoes also recorded and played live with Portuguese trip hop group The gift). Much had happened since the last studio outing and Saturnia reinvented its blend of modern exotic space psychedelia for a surprising album. The glitter Odd. This recording was well received by music critics and head people and was released in August 2001. The Glitter Odd did well and Saturnia got 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 Saturnia signed, in January 2003, a deal for the new album with Italian cult label Mellow records. Critics received this album as the confirmation of Saturnias music solidity, refinement and sophistication. That is now.
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