The Dark Star Orchestra of Turkish folk rock usher in a new era of fuzzy, funky psychedelia.
If the music of the Amsterdam-based,Turkish-inspiredpsychedelic act AltınGün throws you intoa time warp, thenyou’re not imaginingthings—it just means the bandis successfully doing its thing.Indeed, this multinationalcollective is stirring up fansacross Europe and the Statesby reimagining Turkish folkstandards and cult-rock hitsfrom decades ago, pumpingup the fuzz and the funk.
The band’s name even means“Golden Day” in Turkish; callthem the most innovativeOttoman cover band ever, oreven the Dark Star Orchestra ofTurkish folk-rock.
Within the first 30 seconds of Altın Gün’s sophomore album, Gece, it’s clear that these songs groove as hard today as they did when they were originally written back in the ‘70s or before—and the band’s sonic brush-up hasn’t taken away any of the originals’ entrancing appeal. Album opener “Yolcu” takes a gorgeously mesmerizing acoustic incantation from Turkish legend Neşet Ertaş and transforms it into an echoing, bass-heavy psychedelic jam straight out of an Istanbul garage, begging for some incense and dim lighting.
The fact that Altın Gün wasn’t founded by a Turkish musician could be contentious, sure. But bassist Jasper Verhulst is as culturally and musically reverent as one would hope. He grew up in Amsterdam and spent his youth digging through his father’s record collection. There, he found standards: The Beatles, Kraftwerk. And others sent him spinning through musical styles that were a far cry from his European upbringing—namely,a CD box set of the history ofJamaican music.
But then, in 2006, London’s Finders Keepers Records (“Uncovering the best in Psychedelic/Jazz/ Folk Funk and Avant-Garde rarities,” as their website declares) unleashed a reissue of Turkishsinger Selda Bağcan’s 1976self-titled album—a recordthat, in its time, turned thestar from a Joan Baez-like folkhero to a leader of Turkey’sburgeoning psychedelicmovement.
The reissue’s track “YazGazeteci Yaz,” says Verhulst,“was a bit of a cult hit out here,and a lot of DJs were playingit. I loved the combination ofTurkish scales and traditionalmusic with these psychedelicsounds of the ‘70s. The synths,the fuzz guitars, the delays andphasers. It totally moved me.”Just like that, the seeds of AltınGün were sown.
Those seeds began to sprout in 2015, when Verhulst and future Altın Gün guitarist Ben Rider touched down in Istanbul as part of the touring band for Dutch psych-cult hero Jacco Gardner. They stuck around the city to explore the scene and plunge through record crates, andreturned with a far deeperappreciation of Turkish musicthan ever before. It was time toform a band—and, naturally,he’d need some Turkishpeople to sing the growingcollection of Turkish songshe wanted to play.Verhulst put outa call on Facebook.Two musicians fromHolland fit the bill:singer Merve Dasdemirand singer, keyboardistand saz player ErdinçEcevit Yildiz.
“They loved theidea,” says Verhulst.“Erdinç had alreadywanted to start aproject like thishimself. He justcouldn’t find the rightpeople where he lived.”
Verhulst already hada bank of Turkish folkfavorites, but his newly formedensemble—which also includedRider and Jungle by Nightpercussionist Gino Groeneveldplus a recent addition, drummerDaniel Smienk—made thatmusical to-do list a reality. AltınGün set to work, tearing apartsongs by Turkish icons likeSelda Bağcan, Barış Manço andErkin Koray, and reassemblingthem as twisting, twirlingpsychedelic anthems.
“Luckily, for us, [the songs to choose from] are endless,” says Verhulst. “I usually pick out a melody I like from my Turkish records, or Spotify or YouTube. I don’t speak Turkish, so the Turks in the band have to approve the lyrics before we play a song. Usually, we try to pick songs that haven’t been done in a groovy way so we can really make them our own.”
By 2018, Altın Gün had cut their debut, On (or “10,” referring to the number of tracks on the LP), which they self-recorded in their Amsterdam rehearsal space. International tours and festival dates quickly followed, as music lovers with a flair for more esoteric sounds ate up the band’s densely rhythmic, idiosyncratically melodic sets.
“It felt natural to start thisproject when I had an emptyyear ahead of me in 2017,” saysVerhulst. “But I never expectedto travel with it this much.”
And yet, Altın Gün’s successraises the question: Howimportant is it for a band towrite original songs? Andis that the only measure ofartistic creativity?
Verhulst would answer that it’s not—and not simply because he describes himself as “definitely not a songwriter.”
“I love the idea of just playing standards and traditionals,” he says. “It’s kind of old-fashioned in a cool way. Before The Beatles, almost every [rock] band was just playing standards or covers. Turkish music is a beautiful and rich tradition that deserves to be heard all around the world. And there are people coming to our shows who haven’t heard much Turkish music before.”
With Gece, Altın Gün deftly straddles the line between gatekeepers to a musical tradition and creators of something wholly new. The album’s 10 tracks are covers (except for one improvised piece) but in the loosest sense of the word, as these classics and lesser-known songs are melted down and reshaped into their funkiest forms. And, when the band hurls themselves into the whirlwind riffing of “Kolbastı” or the undeniably catchy synth backflips of “Süpürgesi Yoncadan,” one thing is clear: Altın Gün is forging a golden age of its own.
This article originally appears in the June 2019 issue of Relix. For more features, interviews, album reviews and more, subscribe here.
