KURA Verdes Anos is the record nobody in Portugal expected from a DJ who spent a decade on the Tomorrowland and Ultra main stages. Released on September 4, 2026 through Columbia/B1 Recordings, a Sony Music label, the two track EP takes “Verdes Anos”, the 1963 Portuguese guitar piece by Carlos Paredes, and rebuilds it as a 138 BPM peak time techno track with Coimbra guitarist Diogo Mendes playing the melody live. The clip of the two of them performing it on the Lisbon riverfront, in front of the Torre de Belém, has been doing the rounds all week.

What “Verdes Anos” is, and why it matters in Portugal

To understand why this release is getting a reaction, you need to know what the source material means at home. In 1962 the young director Paulo Rocha invited Carlos Paredes to write the music for his first feature, Os Verdes Anos (“The Green Years”), written by Nuno Bragança and released in 1963. The film is now regarded as one of the founding works of the Novo Cinema movement in Portugal, and Paredes’ theme, recorded with Fernando Alvim on viola, became the piece he was most associated with for the rest of his life. It was later included on his first studio album and has been covered by generations of Portuguese musicians since.

Paredes himself, who died in 2004, is widely considered the greatest player of the guitarra portuguesa, the twelve string instrument at the heart of fado. His melody for “Verdes Anos” is one of those tunes that most Portuguese people can hum without knowing where it came from. That is exactly what makes a techno version a risky proposition.

How the KURA Verdes Anos collaboration came together

The techno version did not start in a studio. In July, Diogo Mendes, a musician from Coimbra who plays the Portuguese guitar in the city’s own tradition and has three albums of original material to his name, accepted an invitation from KURA to join him on stage at Figueira da Foz. Wearing the black student cape of the Coimbra academic tradition, he played “Verdes Anos” over the DJ’s set in front of a festival crowd. The video spread fast enough that it closed that week’s evening news bulletin on TVI, according to Diário de Coimbra.

The studio version followed a few weeks later. On Beatport the EP is listed as two tracks, an Original Mix and an Extended version, both filed under Techno (Peak Time / Driving) at 138 BPM in G minor. The catalogue is Columbia/B1 Recordings, which places the record inside Sony Music rather than on an independent dance label, a sign of how the project is being positioned in Portugal.

Who KURA is

Behind the KURA name is Rúben de Almeida, born in Leiria in 1990. He started DJing in Lisbon clubs in 2005 and spent three years as a resident at Bahaus before his break arrived in 2013, when Hardwell played one of his demos at Tomorrowland. That led to a deal with Hardwell’s Revealed Recordings and a debut single, “Sabotage”, followed by releases on Musical Freedom, Spinnin’ and Flashover.

Over the next decade KURA became the most internationally visible Portuguese DJ of the big room era, playing Tomorrowland, Ultra Miami, Ultra Europe, Creamfields and Rock in Rio Lisboa, with support from Hardwell, Armin van Buuren and Tiësto. His label’s current press materials put his catalogue at 284 million streams and 1.2 million Shazams. More recently, Amelie Lens and Lilly Palmer have appeared on his list of supporters, which tells you where the sound has been heading.

The pivot to techno

“Verdes Anos” is the clearest statement yet of a change KURA has been making for a couple of years. After building a career in EDM, he has been describing his new material as darker, heavier and more cinematic, and the EP is the first release under that direction to land on a major label. Rather than sampling the Paredes melody, the track has Mendes play it live on the guitarra portuguesa over a driving kick, which is why the live clips work: the guitar is not a topline pasted onto a beat, it is the lead instrument.

It is not the first time a Portuguese producer has gone near this piece, and the comments under the announcement show the split you would expect. Some listeners describe goosebumps at hearing the melody at club tempo. Others argue that a tune built on nostalgia should not be pushed to 138 BPM, and a few purists have pointed to earlier electronic reworks they prefer. That argument is not new in dance music. The debate around what a producer is allowed to do with someone else’s recording has been running for decades, as our recent piece on the Kraftwerk sampling ruling in Germany showed, and film themes in particular have a long history of becoming dance records, from Born Slippy .NUXX onward.

Why this one is worth paying attention to

Portugal has produced plenty of DJs who play abroad, but very few dance records that carry a piece of the country’s own musical identity into a club context. “Verdes Anos” does that with the most recognisable Portuguese guitar melody there is, played by a musician from the tradition that produced it, on a record released by a major. Whether the techno crowd takes to it is a separate question. What is already clear is that KURA has picked the one piece of music that guarantees the whole country will have an opinion.

The KURA Verdes Anos EP is out now on Columbia/B1 Recordings and available on Beatport and all streaming platforms.