Gaspar Varela, the Portuguese guitar prodigy, was touring the United States with Madonna, when his older brother, Sebastião, sent him some of the songs he started making with his friend Rafael Matos. Both had already played together in some bands and the idea was just to ask the younger brother to record some Portuguese guitar parts. The truth is that “things went on” and ended up becoming more serious, with the trio, in the meantime called Expresso Transatlântico (in a good-humoured allusion to the beginning of the band, with an ocean in the middle), already counting on a homonymous EP, released at the end of last year. “When we got together physically for the first time, we immediately realized that we could form a band and we agreed to start working on the songs in a more solid way”, they say. The band's presentation concert was at Maria Matos Theatre, in Lisbon, on December 7th, 2021, a few days after the death of Pedro Gonçalves, from Dead Combo, to whom they dedicated the show. “Their influence on our music is obvious and huge, because they are the band that best managed to represent, in terms of music, what Lisbon is today”.
