San Leo is an experimental rock duo formed in Italy in 2013 that brings us “hypnotic grooves, incendiary intensity, and minimalism.” The band describes their music as “mantra-core” and “trance-noise,” and they’ve returned their fifth studio album, Aves Raras, released on November 17th via Bronson Recordings.
The Italian cosmic couriers say Aves Raras is “a resounding statement of intent, arguably their most accomplished and well-rounded effort to date.” If you like trippy, drone-out instrumental psychedelic music with plenty of krautrock influences, Aves Raras should be on your Bandcamp wishlist.
About San Leo and Aves Raras
Comprised of four tracks and clocking in at around 38 minutes, Aves Raras brings us an analog slab of tribal ritual music, bold guitar riffs, and shimmering layers of synth. But there’s more! How about frantic grooves, ghostly (occasional) vocals, dazzling walls of noise, and pastoral tonal passages? San Leo says the record is “the ultimate call to enlightenment through euphoria.”
San Leo was formed in Rimini, Italy, in 2013 by the mysterious duo of inserirefloppino (drums) and m tabe (guitar, etc). They had played in the local scene for years with various bands and solo projects, exploring multiple genres from psychedelic folk, metal, krautrock, ambient, noise, and free jazz. They formed San Leo with the intent of pushing their minimal instrumentation of guitar and drums to the extreme.
In 2021, San Leo played LeGuessWho? in Utrecht, and in 2022, they added a new array of sounds (samples, keys, vocals) and shared the stage with international acts like …and you will know us by the Trail of Dead and Ecstatic Vision. 2022 also saw San Leo extensively touring with Unsane for the final leg of their European tour.
Aves Raras was recorded by Andrea Sardovi at Duna Studio, Yuri Pierini recorded drums at Blue Audio Studio, and San Leo did additional recording. The record was mixed by Grammy and Emmy-award-winning producer Francesco Donadello at Kalimba Studio and Synecdoche Music Research, Berlin.
The Songs
The album starts with “ARIES,” an experimental instrumental track nearly twenty minutes long. Like most of San Leo’s music, the track is highly cinematic, with various sounds and textures layered over the drones that sometimes veer into hard rock and other times creep you out.
The band is big fans of film genres like 40s noir and 80s horror, old and new Western, science fiction, and everything in between. The spacey synth in “ARIES” shows the sci-fi influence, but overall, the entire song feels like something that could be in a weird indie-film soundtrack. They call the tracks on the record “tribal ritual music as if it were composed and conducted by H.P. Lovecraft.” If that’s not enough to make you want to listen, I’m unsure what other description would.
“J!OY” comes next and is much shorter – three minutes and twenty-seven seconds. It blasts out of the gate with pounding drums and wicked guitar riffs, sounding like an Explosions in The Sky song at the end when they hit their momentous finale. “J!OY” also includes mantra-like vocals over a rollicking rhythm that sometimes feels a bit alt-rock. Despite the hints of alternative rock, there’s still plenty of psychedelic madness.
“FUTURA 2000” is another lengthy track at eleven and thirty-four seconds, starting with the weird soundscapes, synth, and hypnotic percussion that San Leo is known for. It’s a sound that feels futuristic and has some industrial noise elements, and it also employs the techniques of drone music. The percussion is the coolest part, the incessant tick-tack-tap-tap that had me wondering how they created those sounds. It’s a trippy-ass instrumental track.
The record ends with “AL.AY,” which is much shorter at just over four minutes. A wave of guitar crescendos washes over the listener, and this was another track that I thought had a post-rock feel to it. The guitar noises rise and fall, creating an interesting drone sound that shifts ever so slightly over the runtime before ending the record in style.
Final Thoughts
San Leo’s Aves Raras provides a rich sonic experience over its 38 minutes, combining elements of Krautrock, post-rock, ambient drone, and plenty of atmospheric psychedelic rock. For psychedelic music fans, there’s not much to dislike about the album, which is trance-inducing and hypnotic.
Aves Raras is available on Bandcamp digitally and on vinyl and compact disc, and Krautrock fans should especially enjoy it. Go back and listen to the rest of San Leo’s catalog while you’re at it and get lost in the ocean of sounds.
Check out San Leo’s Aves Raras on Bandcamp here.
Support San Leo by finding them on Bandcamp or social media (Facebook, Instagram).
Support Bronson Recordings by finding them on Bandcamp, their official website, or social media (Facebook, Instagram).
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