Press kit

Ilo Varga is a producer and singer from Lisbon. Her third album, Salt Season, written in Setúbal and recorded live in nine days, is out 30 October 2026 on Tidewater Records, followed by a fourteen-date tour of Europe and North America.

Ilo Varga is a producer and singer from Lisbon. Born in Budapest and raised in Faro, she moved to Lisbon in 2016 to study sound engineering and spent three years recording bands on the late shift at a rehearsal studio in Marvila.

Her records start with a place. Tide Clock (2023) was written along the Tagus, one song a month for a year. The Cacilhas EP (2025) was recorded on the night ferry across the river. Her third album, Salt Season, was written in a rented flat in Setúbal over the summer of 2025 and recorded live with her band in nine days.

Salt Season is out 30 October 2026 on Tidewater Records. The tour runs from Porto on 5 November to Mexico City on 21 January.

Ilo Varga is a producer and singer from Lisbon. Born in Budapest in 1994 and raised in Faro, where her mother taught piano and her father fixed boat engines, she moved to Lisbon in 2016 to study sound engineering. She left the course in its second year and spent the next three working the late shift at a rehearsal studio in Marvila, recording any band that would let her and learning to make records from the desk outwards.

Her first album, Small Hours, came out on cassette in 2019 and sold out its run of 300 at shows. Tidewater Records signed her in 2022. Tide Clock (2023) was written to a rule: one song a month, at night, within sight of the river. The tour that followed ended with a sold-out night at B.Leza in June 2024, released as Live at B.Leza. The single Glasshouse came the same spring.

In the winter of 2024 she rode the last ferries from Cais do Sodré to Cacilhas with binaural microphones and built the five tracks of the Cacilhas EP (2025) from what she heard: the engine, the rail, the people going home. Alongside her records she DJs, mostly at Lux Frágil, where her monthly night Late Shift began in 2025.

Salt Season, her third album, was written in a rented flat in Setúbal over the summer of 2025, between the salt pans of the Sado and the ferry to Tróia. She took the songs to Estúdio Valentim with Marta Coelho (bass), Ricardo Pinto (drums), Joana Brito (guitar) and Duarte Sá (saxophone), and the five of them recorded it live in one room in nine days; most vocals are first or second takes. The first single, Low Sun, was filmed on the salt pans at Alcochete before dawn.

Salt Season is out 30 October 2026 on Tidewater Records on vinyl, CD and digital. The tour opens at Hard Club in Porto on 5 November and runs through Europe in November and December and North America and Mexico in January 2027.