Altın Gün, photo by Sanja Marusic

Of the endless temporal and cross-cultural collisions enabled by the internet’s democratization of music history, one of the most pronounced and far-reaching fusions has been the Anatolian rock revival. Swirled from Turkey’s Anatolian folk and rock and roll’s revolutionary import in the ‘60s, the style’s endurance over six decades is a testament to the potential inherent in its experimental and syncretic qualities. No band has done more to expand that expressive capacity in the music’s 21st-century vogue than Altın Gün, who’ve returned today with their sixth studio album, Garip.

On their first full-length offering since 2023’s Aşk, the genre-bending Amsterdam-based ensemble finds new possibilities after a decade of innovation by looking to one of their core influences: the late Turkish folk forerunner Neşet Ertaş. With imaginative and mesmerizing takes on 10 of Ertaş’s most iconic songs, drawn from his discography of more than 30 albums, the quintet masterfully navigates the balance of historical reverence and forward-looking creativity at the heart of its assumed sound, now dressed up in shades of synth-pop. Amid spiraling synth lines, saxophone outbursts, searing slide guitar and cinematic strings from the Stockholm Studio Orchestra, it’s the emotional immediacy of Ertaş’s compositions, and the devotional gravity that spotlights it, that resound most clearly.

“Both of my parents are from Turkey, from the same area he is from,” says Altin Gün’s vocalist, keyboardist and bağlama player Erdinç Eçevit. “It’s the music that I grew up with. When I was five, six years old, my grandfather always had cassettes by Neşet Ertaş and I used to listen to it all day long. Then I was too young to really understand the lyrics and the meaning, but I really liked the melodies… The Turkish traditional music is the blues of the Turkish people.”

After three years of earning acclaim for their top-tier interpretations of the Grateful Dead’s songbook, the celebrated all-drag tribute ensemble BERTHA have unveiled their debut live album, Slayin’ in the Band Vol. 1. In a compilation of their finest moments on stage so far, the all-star collective of queer and allied East Nashville artists tears through takes on classics like Bob Weir’s moving “Cassidy” and a 20-minute “Terrapin Station,” with a portion of all Bandcamp proceeds benefitting Trans Aid Nashville. Meanwhile, only months after triumphantly returning from a seven-year hiatus with Rushmere, Mumford & Sons have issued their Aaron Dessner-produced sixth studio album, Prizefighter. 
“We feel like we’re hitting our prime as a creative force,” Marcus Mumford shared. “We’re putting everything we have into this now, and we’re using everything about our experience so far to embrace exactly who we are. We’re comfortable in our skins these days. And Prizefighter is us going for it – serious and playful, sometimes bruised and always hopeful… I’m more excited to be in this band than I’ve ever been.”

The latest batch of Relix Staff Picks also includes new music from The Messthetics & James Brandon Lewis, Langkamer, Fabiano do Nascimento, Shintaro Sakamoto, Group A.D., DJ Harrison, Courtney Barnett, Victoryland, and many more gems. Tune in here.