So I had this tape laying around for decades at home, but never properly gave it a listen until recently. I thought the music was typical Turkish folklore music, produced as some sort of souvenir, but it actually turned out to be one of the nicest psychedelic Turkish tapes I have yet heard.
Turkish folklore music is usually acoustic and obviously covering traditionals, often also quite hard to distinguish from each other. This tape too is a lengthy mix-up of all kind of similar traditional Turkish songs and melodies, but the key lies in the fact that the whole thing is electrified with the electro-saz (electric bağlama) as well as with keyboards that were manufactured in the 80's. The music is easily to be put in line with the sounds of older Turkish and Anatolian psychedelic music like Selda, Erkin Koray or Edip Akbayram in which the use of electric instruments took over from the acoustic predecessors. A bit like what Miles Davis did in Jazz at a certain moment.
The music on Burcu Burcu Türkiye'm could very well be the summer soundtrack of you moving forward in an ever-lasting trans-orient-express while its engine driver and yourself are spacing out on a fair amount of hashish and opium discussing Rumi's poetry. You're flying through the Turkish countryside after a magical woman has just red your future in the coffee ground while you're solving the mysteries of the Nazar. It could be this.
But aside from that, the music is also creating a similar atmosphere as contemporary artists like the Syrian musician Omar Souleyman or the Sahrawi psych-force Group Doueh from the Western Sahara. Obviously these are different geographical regions, but they are somewhat musically connected in their use of the endless repetitive psychedelic oriental sounds inducing their trance.
The tape is unindexed which seemed a better choice. Specially the B-Side is a psychedelic treat! Enjoy the trip!
Get it HERE
