LISTEN: Saruna are Seattle’s Latest Soul Purveyors

Give an early listen to their eponymous debut LP

September 21, 2023September 21, 2023 Ron Hart 0 Comments Black Pumas, Brad, Car Seat Headrest, Christa Wells, Les Claypool's Flying Frog Brigade, Nirvana, Saruna, SAULT, Seattle, Seattle Erotic Arts Festival, Shawn Smith, Skerik, Soul, Steve Fisk, Washington

Seattle soul quintet Saruna delivers a relaxed yet sure-footed sense of confidence to the music they’ve created on their eponymous debut LP.

They are a band that began after singer Christa Wells of the electronic soul outfit Dabouge was asked to put together a set for the Seattle Erotic Arts Festival. She quickly recruited her longtime partner in Dabouge, keyboardist Kent Halvorsen, along with bassist Jeremy Lightfoot. Then Halvorsen got on the horn and brought in his friend Alex Mortland on guitar. And with the inclusion of drummer Steven Barci, this crew who united for was initially a one shot deal began to feel like a real band.

They initially called themselves Mother Of Pearl and self-released a 7-inch containing two tracks, “Our Love” and “These Walls,” both of which would be revisited when the band changed their name to Saruna, which is Latvian for conversation. A changing of the guards on drums would transpire as Barci was replaced by Derneill “Woogie D” Washington, and Saruna would find themselves writing songs and gigging around, sharing the stage with such local greats as Skerik of Les Claypool’s Flying Frog Brigade and the late Shawn Smith of Brad among others and building a presence in the Pacific Northwest.

With a cache of cuts ready to be recorded, the band began work on their debut album, tracking primarily at Lightfoot’s Night Rainbow Ranch studio in Tukwila, WA. Saruna features appearances from saxophone / electronics / arrangements by Skerik and vocalist Rhiannon Walther. The record was produced, arranged, and recorded by Saruna, and mixed by Steve Fisk (Nirvana, Car Seat Headrest).

What the band created with Saruna is an album aimed at articulating the human experience through their eyes, crafting an uplifting and jubilant work of art that Rock & Roll Globe is happy to premiere today on the site.

“I hope that this album touches people’s hearts; I’ll be very happy if it also tickles their brains, their reproductive systems & their dopamine-producing neurons, but we are mainly aiming for the heart,” Mortland explains of the record’s nature. “It’s a mixture of Prologue & Chapter 1 in our story… it reflects the individual backgrounds of our individual participants, our initial experiments in finding our core identity as a unit & the first traces of our having actually gripped that identity. It’s a little all-over-the-place, but it’s actually cohesive somehow. It is certainly the finest work of my recording career thus far & I’m extremely proud of it, and it is the launchpad for something that will be even more spectacular.”

Fans of Black Pumas, SAULT and Sade alike will no doubt want to check out the soulful sounds of Saruna below.