Saturna Share Live Studio Performance of ‘Absence’ from Upcoming Album ‘Light and Shadow’
Saturna have shared a live studio performance of ‘Absence’, taken from their forthcoming sixth album, ‘Light and Shadow’. The record arrives September 17 through Spinda Records and Discos Macarras in Europe, with Ripple Music handling the North American release.
Recorded at Siete Barbas Estudio, the video leaves little between the band and the listener. Saturna play together in the room, allowing the quieter details, changes in volume and slight roughness of the take to remain part of the performance. ‘Absence’ grew from an idea by bassist Rod Tirado, but its final shape belongs to the full band. It does not move in a straight line. The arrangement passes from subdued, atmospheric stretches into heavier sections, building through contrast rather than settling into a conventional verse-and-chorus pattern. The song deals with what remains when someone or something is gone. James Vieco’s opening vocal has a restrained, almost spoken quality, with a trace of Jim Morrison in its phrasing, before the rest of the band gradually pushes the song outward. That sense of movement runs through ‘Light and Shadow’. Saturna recorded and produced the album themselves, with drummer Enric Verdaguer handling the mix. The emphasis was on the sound of the group playing, rather than constructing the songs through layers of studio work. The album’s title describes its central tension. Its songs deal with light and darkness, love and hate, life and death, drawing on personal experience and the uneasy relationship between opposing forces. Jondix, the artist behind several of the band’s previous covers and known for his work with Tool, once again supplied the artwork.
Saturna formed in Barcelona and have spent more than a decade working in the space between hard rock, psychedelia and alternative rock. Their five previous albums have often balanced thick riffs against more melodic and reflective writing, and ‘Absence’ continues that approach without sounding like a simple return to familiar ground. Guitarist Max Eriksson contributed more extensively to the writing of ‘Light and Shadow’, bringing another compositional voice into the group.
‘Absence’ is an understated introduction to the album…. patient at first, heavier when it needs to be, and recorded without hiding the interaction between the four musicians.
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