BaBa ZuLa have been playing their glorious swirling, dubby psychedelic Turkish music since 1996. The band are rooted in traditional Turkish folk but with the grit of amplification and effects on top of powerful beats they forge hypnotic passages you can get lost in. Their new album, İstanbul Sokakları, is a journey through sound and landscape that starts with ‘İstanbul Express Divan Taksim’, a vintage railway announcer calling out the departure of a train leaving Istanbul for Munich. This and the many other field recordings that pepper the album come from the band’s co-founder, and master of the electric saz, Murat Ertel, a life-long passion that started with a fascination for his father’s reel-to-reel tape recorder. Ertel has captured the chaotic sounds of street bazaars, coastal foghorns and seagulls crying as well as the tranquillity and peace of birds in his secluded garden.
‘İstanbul Express Divan Taksim’ is a slow build and like many of the tracks comes from a core taksim (a drone similar to the raga you hear in Indian music). The root-note drone sets the mood and allows for melodic improvisation over the top. Ertel explains “At the beginning of the 20th century, taksims were very popular in Turkish culture, but then this tradition slowly died.” He wanted to not only bring them back but take them in a different direction. “My taksims are more experimental. In tradition, the root tone is played by one or two acoustic instruments. For the album, Levent and I looked for how to make this root note come out of a synthesizer. It’s a new way of playing taksims. Maybe some traditional guys will be angry with me, but I think this is the way taksims should go.“
In comparison to the heavier 70s acid rock feel of Derin Derin (2019) or the trippy reggae/dub vibe of the expansive XX (2017), İstanbul Sokakları is full of slow burns. Each taksim draws you in – they are the charmers we are the snake – they are evocative and heady but then there are moments on tracks like ‘Yok Haddi Yok Hesabı (No Limit No Calculation)’ or ‘Yaprakların Arasından (In Between the Leaves)’ where they burst the banks of the drone and flood the senses with swirling saz runs or the sharp tang of the darbuka.
Vocals from Ertel are rich and commanding; sometimes talking-in-tune or rising to fever pitch whereas his wife Esma can morph her incredible voice from a whisper at one end to Anatolian ululation at the other (a way of moving the tongue quickly in the mouth). Their contrasting styles make for a fantastic combination and perfectly match the highs and lows of the arrangements.
But it’s the electric saz that acts as a dazzling golden thread which runs through the album. Ertel’s has preternatural command of the microtonal scales that give Turkish music its ‘exotic’ feel; exotic because Western ears are attuned to tonal or chromatic scales so the brain gets a tingle when it hears the fractional intervals that micro tones provide. TV producers should also note that if they are looking for a mood-enhancing replacement to Ry Cooder’s Paris, Texas theme they need look no further than a lot of BaBa Zula’s music. I saw BaBa Zula in 2017, and they transformed the audience into a sweaty dancing mess, even descending from the stage near the end of their set to play in the audience. If you get the chance, go and see them live.
İstanbul Sokakları it is an outstanding release that demonstrates how in control of their sound they have become after nearly 30 years playing together. They make the difficult sound effortless and, despite the obvious talent of all the musicians, ego is put aside to create a cohesive sound that can soothe in one minute and quicken the pulse in another.
BaBa Zula: Levent Akman (spoons, percussions, machines, toys), Murat Ertel (electric saz and other stringed instruments, vocals, theremin), Ümit Adakale (darbuka and percussion player) and Esma Ertel (vocals).
BaBa ZuLa socials: Website | Facebook | Bandcamp | Instagram | X | YouTube
İstanbul Sokakları is released through Glitterbeat Records: Website | Facebook | Bandcamp | Instagram | X | YouTube
Review by Paul F Cook
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