Tracklist:

Rattlesnake • Melting • Open Water • Sleep Drifter • Billabong Valley • Anoxia • Doom City • Nuclear Fusion • Flying Microtonal Banana

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211: Erkin Koray // Arap Saçı

Arap Saçı Erkin Koray 2021, Pharaway Sounds

Pharaway Sounds’ Arap Saçı (Arab Hair) collects 24 Erkin Koray tracks originally issued as singles between 1968 and 1976. Koray is best known in the West for his groundbreaking fusion of Anatolian/Arabic folk and classical with crunching psychedelic rock on his 1974 debut LP Elektronik Türküler. However, as Angela Sawyer’s tart liner notes observe, Turkey was predominantly a singles market at the time, and back home Koray did most of his damage on 7”. The limitations of the format, and the preferences of Koray’s record company, preclude the kind of long-form acid voyages he undertook on Elektronik Türküler, but he's able to generate plenty of smoke on these “pop” singles.

Highlights abound. Arap Saçı kicks off with 1973’s “Mesafaler” (“Distances”), a scorching psych banger complete with cowbell that only stops rocking to periodically gawp and stare fixedly into space for 20 or 30 seconds at a time before shaking itself awake to get back to business. (Is there footage of a Turkish TV performance featuring liquid light art? You bet your hairy ass there is.)

The waltzing, organ and hand drum-led “Komşu Kızı” (“Girl Nextdoor”) is a classic melancholy Middle Eastern ballad that hides a wild, surprising drop two-thirds of the way through; Koray freaks “Aşka İnanmıyorum” (“I Do Not Believe in Love”) with his insinuating croon and serpentine guitar licks; “Istemem” (“I Do Not Want”) mixes a light-stepping folk beat with some stinging solos that aren’t too far off what Uli Jon Roth would get up to in Germany with Scorpions a few years later. There really isn’t a bum track to be found.

This new compilation covers much of the same ground as the ‘70s Erkin Koray (AKA Mesafaler) and Erkin Koray 2 (AKA Şaşkın) singles compilations, and Pharaway Sounds opts to follow their track sequencing as closely as possible—a good choice, as they had a great flow, though a bit frustrating for those hoping to track Koray’s musical development chronologically. Regardless, we know that Koray was exposed to Western music as a young age, learning Occidental classical music on the piano as a child and discovering rock ‘n’ roll as a teen. According to the liners, Koray was performing songs by Elvis, Fats Domino, and Jerry Lee Lewis in the late ‘50s, and by the late ‘60s, when he began to emerge as a recording artist, he’d clearly imbibed industrial quantities of Hendrix, Cream, and the other usual psychonauts.

In a previous review, I briefly contrasted Koray with Egypt’s Omar Khorshid, a fellow guitar god and contemporary pioneer in electrified Arabic music. Khorshid had some familiarity with Western pop music, but he was working with the top stars in Arab folk and classical, using electric instruments to push traditional Eastern music forward rather than to fuse it with rock. Koray on the other hand was a long-haired freak who claims to have fought in the streets with a knife and joined Anglo-American-inspired combos with names like Mustard (Hardal) and Sweat (Ter). By the late ‘60s rock had become popular in Turkey, as had Arabesk music, which Sawyer describes as “a purposely uncouth… appropriation of Arabic pop and folk, popular with rural or marginalized folks who were suddenly encountering pockets of urbanized Europe in their backyard.” Koray intuitively crossbred the invasive genre (rock) with the reactionary one (Arabesk) and found himself one of the fathers of a powerful new mongrel breed of psych music.

By reissuing both Elektronik Türküler and these essential singles, Pharaway Sounds has done a real service to psych and non-Western rock aficionados. Koray makes a great gateway to the other masters of ‘70s Anatolian folk-rock, including Selda, Moğollar, and Barış Manço, a loose affiliation of artists that has been one of my most prized discoveries of recent years.

211/365

Booster - Phase Shifter

“70's made in Turkey ... 220v european voltage. ... Only very old people knows that brand "Booster" ” 

The rough sand-cast aluminium enclosure looks like a reference to early Roland-Boss enclosures, it does serve only little for knob-protection, though.

It has a quite low output, so “Booster” does not seem to be a function of the device, but maybe the brand name, indeed. Furthermore it offers a moderate phaser and sort of a flanger at the extreme settings of the speed knob.

The PCB looks quite identical to an early Electro-Harmonics - Bad Stone phaser (the greenish, perhaps even older PCB is an example), so it might very well be a one-off rehouse with modifications.

Given it’s age there might be a connection to the Turkish Rock scene in the 70s?

Any hints welcome!

cred: reverb.com/Mustafa Sahin, home-wrecker.com/badstone.html

Gaye Su Akyol - Love Buzz

Gaye Su Akyol is a singer, painter, and anthropologist from Istanbul, Turkey. Her two new, self-produced tracks for the Singles Club fuse hard rock, surf, and electronic music to push at the boundaries of rock and Anatolian psychedelic music (see New York Times Dec. 2019 feature). Their single leads with a cover of “Love Buzz,” originally by the Dutch psych band Shocking Blue, and famously covered by Nirvana on their 1988 debut single. It is a fitting tribute to the huge impact Nirvana had on Akyol in at a young age. The B-side, “‘Böyle Olur Mu,” breathes new life into the song with hard-to-forget electro baglama, thick bass riffs, heroic guitars, and dark beats.

Her US tour starts on Saturday:

SEP 09 Bryant Park, New York City, NY SEP 11 City Winery Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA SEP 12 Jammin Java, Vienna, VA SEP 13 City Winery Boston, Boston, MA SEP 15 Drom, New York City, NY SEP 17 Los Globos, Los Angeles, CA SEP 19 Rickshaw Stop, San Francisco, CA SEP 20 Nectar Lounge, Seattle, WA

Selda - Türkülerimiz 2 The Middle East and Anatolia will always have a special place in my heart, and amongst all the special things and people from the region, the music, specifically, is always something special. And from all the music out of the regions that I love, Selda has to be one of my all time favorites. If you're not familiar with music from Turkey or the Middle East, then this is a wonderful place to start. Heartfelt and beautiful.

Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek - Bal (2022)

61. Altın Gün | Aşk

🇳🇱 Pays-Bas & 🇹🇷 Turquie | Glitterbeat | 40 minutes | 10 morceaux

Le groupe amstellodamois aux racines turques renoue magnifiquement avec l’inspiration vibrante de ses deux premiers albums, après deux autres opus assez décevants. On retrouve sur Ask toute la vitalité et tout le caractère irrésistible de leur musique chaleureuse et bigarrée, revisitant l’anatolian rock avec un panache et un enthousiasme diablement communicatifs.

Erkin Koray - Çöpçüler (Live @ Jolly Joker Ankara, 2013)

Mustafa Erkin Koray

24 June 1941 – 7 August 2023

A pioneering figure in Turkish Psych and “Father of Turkish Rock,” Koray blended traditional Turkish melodies with Western Rock elements in bands as early as the 50s. His first solo single ‘Anma Arkadaş’ was released in 1967 followed by a self-titled album in 1973. His 1974 album ‘Elektronik Türküler’ is considered a groundbreaking work, fusing Anatolian Folk music with Psychedelic Rock.

Kostnatění - Úpal

(2023, full album)

[Black Metal, Avant-Garde Metal, Anatolian Rock]

28: Selda // Vurulduk Ey Halkim Unutma Bizi

Vurulduk Ey Halkim Unutma Bizi Selda 1976, Türküola

The western thirst for vintage psych rock is unquenchable, which has led to a ton of great reissues in the past decade from far-flung psychedelic hotbeds like Zambia, Japan, and Turkey—the latter home of the great Selda Bağcan. Selda’s ‘70s folk rock recordings are as galvanizing as any punk, by turns as warlike and ecstatic as the leftist poetry and Islamic scales that give life to the songs. 1976’s Vurulduk Ey Halkim Unutma Bizi (We Were Shot, My People, Don’t Let Us Forget) isn’t as fuzz-drenched as the self-titled LP that proceeded it earlier in the same year, but it is equally fiery.

I’ve always found that folk music from around the Mediterranean Sea has a swashbuckling quality, the interplay of string players like two perfectly matched fencers thrusting and parrying atop a long dining table. The crossed guitar and baglama illustrated on Vurulduk Ey Halkim Unutma Bizi’s back cover comes across as a statement of purpose. It’s music that gets the blood pumping, for dance or protest alike, and Selda matches it vocally. She’s the heartfelt call to the snaky electric baglama and organ’s response on “Karaoglan”; the frosty embodiment of a woman finally pushed to close a door forever on “Bundan Sonra”; the mountain wind on the forlorn “Maden Dagi.”

It’s not surprising that Turkey’s far right authorities found Selda’s music threatening enough to harass her for most of the following decade—it’s heady stuff even without the help of intelligible words. Online translation butchers the lyrics included on the sleeve, yet the imagery in the fragments is powerful:

We bled, we became soil, We withdrew, we became a flag, We became leaves, we came to this day We made the bread abundant, We made the pain honey. (from “Aciyi Bal Eyledik” [“We Turned the Pain Into Honey”])

In “Bundan Sonra” (“After This”), describing some unknown, unforgiveable betrayal:

Quran, Bible, if you were a psalm I would not open you from now on, If you were the juice of the river of paradise I would not drink you from now on. […] Is my death your wish? Your word has worked for me— If you were heaven’s line I wouldn’t cross you from now on.

Imagery of Lorca-esque purity:

They burned their last cigarette like a lamp in their mouths They lit their last cigarette They lit their last cigarette like a lamp in their mouths And they sat Under the dry-leaved cannon tree. (from “Maden Iscileri” [“Miners”])

As with Victor Jara and other politically militant bards of the South American nueva cancion movement, it’s possible to have a rich and fulfilling experience with Selda’s music on its purely sonic merits. But for me anyway, understanding its connections to movements for the rights of working people deepens my appreciation. Vurulduk Ey Halkim Unutma Bizi is a great one.

28/365

Gaye Su Akyol - Anadolu Ejderi - forging the next generation of Anatolian rock

This wildly acclaimed Istanbul-based artist, delivers an unforgettable 4th album Anadolu Ejderi (Anatolian Dragon). Building upon her mélange of Turkish psychedelia, empowered commentary and retro-futurist sonics, her vision is more personal and uncompromising than ever before. Courage. Bravery. Daring. Those are the watch words that guided Turkey’s Gaye Su Akyol when she was making Anadolu Ejderi, her first full-length release in four years. Already lauded for her startling, innovative mix of Turkish psychedelia and folk song, surf music and ʼ90s Western rock, a global sweet spot where Anatolian music heroine Selda Bağcan rubbed shoulders with Kurt Cobain, Akyol was ready to expand her vision after a relentless period on the road.

Click through for more extensive liner notes.

Hüsnü Özkartal Orkestrası – Çağdaş Oyun Havaları

Hüsnü Özkartal Orkestrası – Çağdaş Oyun Havaları

Turkey, 1972, Turkish music / Anatolian rock This is prime Finders Keepers real estate. Music from another time, another place, just “world” and “lo-fi” enough to satisfy any hipster’s lust for vinyl that’s never been re-released. Listen to the “warm” crackles preserved on those FLAC files! Whew. Almost passed out there.

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