SOLAR CORONA
Meet the Portuguese quartet taking instrumental stoner rock into trippy new frontiers.
SOMETIMES, AT MOMENTS when the sister planets of stoner metal, psychedelia, space rock, electronica and prog align, a loud, consciousness-altering jam results. It may be happening right now in the north of Portugal, where four intrepid stargazers travelling under the name Solar Corona have just released their fifth album of instrumental explorations, entitled Pace.
Over the last three years, as the world went in and out of hibernation, the band set about shaping up a series of jams they had improvised in their hideaway in the hills of Alpendurada, not far from Porto. But compared to previous studio sets, this time their sound was expanding further into the stratosphere and away from their more conventional rock roots.
“We come from Barcelos,” says bassist José Roberto Gomes,“which was kind of a Mecca for stoner rock in Portugal. We were heavily influenced by a band from our home town, Black Bombaim, who play a stoner-psych style.”
“We had also grown up around punk rock and loud instrumental music,” says drummer Peter Carvalho, who completed the original three-piece line-up with guitarist/keyboardist Rodrigo Carvalho (no relation) in 2013. “So that was in there as well. We started as a power trio but then wanted to expand the sound.”
The quick-slow approach of 2019’s Lightning One, where tracks Love Is Calling and Speedway channelled the band’s love of punk and thrash metal in between contrasting meditative jams, evolved into something more electronically enhanced and spacey after sax player Julius Gabriel left in 2020 to be replaced by synth whizz and effects specialist Nuno Loureiro, aka Lorr No.
“If it’s just them playing, they make a lot of noise.
And all of them play to the maximum of their sonic capabilities. So I had a hard time at first to find the place to do stuff that fits in between. Then in one of the jams I thought about mic-ing the drums and putting it through effects, and that was a super-cool sound, so we followed on with that, and now as they jam I’m reacting to them with my effects.”
This desire to sculpt a bigger, more cinematic sound can be heard in the way the title track’s techno-tinged thrum gradually builds momentum, and when final track Alpendurada
spins slowly off into the stratosphere, accompanied by haunting electronic shimmers and echoes that sound like they should accompany the Northern Lights dancing overhead.
Elsewhere, there are hints of Jean-Michel Jarre and Tangerine Dream coming through on Parker
SP, which they describe as “a satellite lost grooving amidst light sparks and space debris… our take on a fly-by boogie”. While Status Quo fans might find little of familiarity, it does have a propulsive, hypnotic groove, as does the pounding, propulsive electronic rock stomp of
Heavy Metal Salts.
Having built up a decent following at home,
Solar Corona are now looking to expand their horizons. “This country is too small,” Gomes explains. Meanwhile, they have found that a quarter of their sales through Bandcamp have been to the UK and the band will be making their UK debut playing Astral Festival in Bristol at the end of April – the first but, they hope, not the last time they will turn up their amps on these shores. And they are hoping that readers of this very magazine might help them spread the word. As Peter Carvalho plaintively puts it: “We need you, Prog readers, to get us out of here!”
“WE NEED YOU, READERS, TO GET US OUT OF HERE!”