BABA ZULA - Derin Derin

Behind the multifaceted and intriguing sonic melting pot of the Istanbul band BaBa ZuLa, there's also the hand of former Can drummer Jaki Liebezeit, who in his final years frequently collaborated with the four Turkish musicians. "Derin Derin" marks their return to recording four years after "34 Oto Sanayi" and a full twenty-three years since the band's founding.

Their first project for the Glitterbeat label, the album once again grows out of an interaction with the world of images, having been conceived as the soundtrack for a documentary about falcons. This synergy between film and music is one BaBa ZuLa had already sealed in the past with the album "Dondurmam Gaymak", as well as with their debut "Tabutta Rövaşata". Backing up a psychedelia with tribal, folk, jazz and world contours is a combination of electronic instruments and traditional artifacts, among which the saz, a Turkish stringed instrument, and the oud, a kind of lute typical of Moroccan culture, stand out.

The four musicians, Osman Murat Ertel, Mehmet Levent Akman, Periklis Tsoukalas and Umit Adakale, stage an adventurous music, where styles and cultures merge with unprecedented languages that draw on diverse artistic experiences, such as dub and experimental rock ("Kurt Kapma"), or the early stirrings of New York psychedelia (the Velvet-esque "Kızıl Gözlüm").

"Derin Derin" is a continuous flow of intense and varied compositions that cross the boundary between experimentation and tradition with a sonic aesthetic quite close to certain kraut-rock, between distortions and looped vocals that stir up the Eastern-tinged rhythmic fragmentations of "Port Pass", mantras almost akin to a trance with an engaging, ecstatic melodic fervor ("Kervan Yolda"), and spells of an ethereal nature, where echoes of ambient music, dub and a sudden rhythmic pulse chase one another as in a dream that turns into a nightmare ("Transendance").

In some tracks Turkish folklore takes center stage, albeit contaminated by other world-music suggestions: the tribal "Haller Yollar" and the electro-folk howl of "Rüzgarın Akışı". When electronics and psychedelia take over, it almost sounds like a neo-folk version of Kraftwerk, as happens in the splendid melody packed with electronics and raw sounds of the hypnotic, multicolored "Salıncaksın".

The end result is one of the most thrilling sonic crossroads between East and West: BaBa ZuLa remain sober and essential despite the sheer wealth of suggestions put into play. "Derin Derin" doesn't have the traits of a typical world-music album; at times it echoes certain cultural-artistic intuitions of records like "My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts" or "Passion", but through an eye that isn't that of a Westerner merely interested in other cultures, but of someone who, like BaBa ZuLa, lives its joys and sorrows daily as a protagonist.

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22/11/2019