On their third album, Amsterdam’s finest Turkish psych revivalists add synths and drum machines to spirited ’70s standards from the Anatolian funk canon.
Altin Gün’s third album arrives with the same mysterious allure as a weirdly shaped parcel found under the Christmas tree. Trapped in lockdown, Amsterdam’s finest Turkish psych revivalists started tinkering with drum machines and electronics, adding the spacey synth strut of early-’80s disco to their hallucinogenic rock/folk stew. The prospect sounds so charmingly idiosyncratic on paper that you almost dread to press play, for fear that reality will disappoint.
Remarkably, not only do the results live up to their billing, they also share errant strands of DNA with some surprising strains of contemporary pop. The moody interlocking synth lines of “Ordunun Dereleri” are only a whisker away from the Weeknd’s recent excursions into ’80s revivalism, and the handclap disco beat and wiggling bassline of “Maçka Yolları” is a wayward cousin to Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia. “Yüce Dağ Başında,” meanwhile, sits somewhere between Lindstrøm’s space disco and Gorillaz’ occasional excursions into reggae.
Damon Albarn’s cartoon troupe is a useful reference point for Yol (“road” in English). Much like Gorillaz, Altin Gün concoct their improbable musical fusions in the service of pop music’s joys, rather than eat-your-greens musical worth. Yol represents a fascinating musical laboratory for the way it alloys genres, as the band—founded by Dutch bassist Jasper Verhulst with members of Turkish, Dutch, and British descent—traces unusual routes through source material taken largely from the traditional Turkish songbook. But the results are never less than engaging, suggesting the Mentos-in-a-Coke-bottle school of experimentation rather than the relentless drudge of high school chemistry. If this year sees a livelier, more jubilant amalgam of disco breaks with saz than Yol’s “Hey Nari,” then 2021 will have been an outlandishly funky time indeed.
Allied to this liberal take on genre is Altin Gün’s enlightened view of instrumentation, with the band adding synth, congas, drum machines, and even the cosmic twang of the harp-like Suzuki Omnichord to the psychedelic guitar rock of their two previous albums. This approach might have been inspired by lockdown—the band was stuck at home for three months, swapping demos online—but Yol bubbles with life and adventure, free of the introspective torpor that the pandemic has inspired in some artists.
Altin Gün also have a wise ear for a tune. The songs on Yol are taken from often archaic sources: “Yekte” is a traditional song from the Anatolian city of Kayseri, while “Arda Boylar” comes from a region of the Balkans that once formed part of the Ottoman Empire. Every song works brilliantly in the neo-disco psych environment; the gorgeous despondency of the folk melodies blends with glittering pop production in a stream of gilded melancholy. It helps that Altin Gün are blessed with two extraordinarily gifted singers in Erdinç Ecevit and Merve Dasdemir, whose immaculate technique never comes at the expense of emotive power.
Tapping into these antique melodies gives Yol a curious sense of timelessness. The album sits somewhere between 19th century Ottoman Empire, ’60s Haight-Ashbury, the bubblegum boogie of ’80s New York, and the omnivorous pop universe of the present day. To pull off such a trick is clever indeed. But it is a mark of Altin Gün’s ingeniousness that Yol never feels forced. The album glides along like a particularly elegant swan, musical dexterity and audacious spirit paddling away frantically below the surface.
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