"Love, Peace & Poetry: Turkish Psychedelic Music"

After the Asian volume a few years back, Ididn’t expect further investigation of Eastern psych currents, but I’m happy tobe proved wrong by the series’ tireless curator, Thomas Hartlage, who’sproduced another absolutely solid collection of lost psych brilliance.
QDK Media

This is number nine in the ongoing and continually astoundingcompilation series, after last year’s African volume, Turkish likewise confirms the presence of another fertilepsychedelic scene lost to international obscurity.  Several tracks, including a couple of my favorites by thestill-active master Erkin Koray and truly unclassifiable Moğollar, come frombands already included in the Asian volume but welcome here alongsidelesser-known and just as compelling artists. Like all of the Asian pysch I’ve heard, the Turkish variety is mostcompelling in the way the Western psychedelic rock archetype gets filteredthrough Eastern interpretation and augmented by local tradition. 

Unlike Southeast Asian and Pacific Rim psych, which tends toeither ape Western styles to amusingly warped degrees or let the music run overinto the manic redirections of local pop music, Turkish psych achieves a leanercombination of styles.  Almost everytrack here (save three or four) favors the clipped, driving psych sound of thepopular West, with elements of Turkish folk (türkü) entering only with thevocal or the leading melodic line, usually guitar or traditional stringedinstruments (saz, sitar, bouzouki). 

Strangely, these songs tend not to drift into the freak-outsor heady textures that I associate with Middle Eastern or South Asian music’spreoccupation with transcendental states. (Perhaps this is more evidence of reactionary tendencies in the scene,or just the fallacy of my Western ear.)  Adherence to the Western pop format is, forthe most part, uniform, but this is never a deterrent.  Hearing the beautiful Eastern lilts andintervals jostled within the fiery shuffle of Western psych breakdowns isinvigorating for both, creating an urgency and timelessness that is alwaysperfectly recovered on these comps, but really comes screaming out here, as onthe Mexican volume. 

Yes, there are always exceptions, and with Love, Peace, & Poetry,they’re oftenthe best parts.  On the previous Asianvolume, Moğollar laid down a Durutti Column-esque bliss-out of pluckedguitarand ocean ambience; here they drop the Eastern funk, the dreamy, firmEasternfunk, like Sun City Girls, except sober and enlightened, with a sweatyorgan--brilliant.  Moğollar truly has a unique sound, dubbed‘Anadolu Pop’ upon its release and well worth checking out infull-album form,some of which are available through Shadoks and World Psychedelialabels.  My favorites from this volume, however, arethe two tracks from Selda: ragged raga jams, over-blasted and tight ashell (strangeto hear these melodies with such makeup), with a female vocalist whosoundslike a combination of Grace Slick and one of today’s throaty,art-damagedpunkers.

samples:

• Magollar - Halicite Gunesin Batisi
• Edip Akbayram - Yakar Incenden Incenden
• Selda - Ince Ince Bir Kar Yagar