01. İstanbul Express Divan Taksim 02:40
02. Arsız Saksağan 06:13
03. Çarşı Pazar Bağlama Taksimi 02:22
04. Yok Haddi Yok Hesabı 11:06
05. Bosphorus Cura Taksim 03:28
06. Pisi Pisi Halayı 03:20
07. Yaprakların Arasından 08:30
08. Güzel Bahçe Taksimi 03:32

Veteran Turkish heads who act as a link between Erkin Koray, Can and Mad Professor.” – MOJO

This legendary Istanbul band remains the most experimental exponent of the hotly-tipped contemporary Turkish psych-rock scene. BaBa ZuLa are revered sonic trailblazers who have built a cult following in all corners of the globe and have counted members of Einstürzende Neubauten, Can and Nick Cave the Bad Seeds as their fans.

Pulsing, hypnotic tracks powered by Turkish percussion, glitched electronics, deep bass, electric saz and dual male/female vocals. İstanbul Sokakları (Streets of Istanbul) is a vivid sonic and political statement from a band that continues to show us the future.

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“We are embracing the past, and Turkish tradition,” says BaBa ZuLa co-founder and saz player, Murat Ertel. “But it’s not enough. We are living in the 21st century and we have all the world.”

It could stand as the group’s mission statement. Since first coming together in Istanbul in 1996, BaBa ZuLa have specialised in transporting, psychedelic jams that incorporate electronic sounds, deep beats and supremely heavy dub vibrations, while sitting firmly within a distinctly Turkish sound. Percussion instruments such as the clopping darbuka drum and clattering kaşıklar spoons summon traditional folk-dance rhythms, while Ertel’s electrified saz conjures profound Anatolian moods with a modern, amplified twist.

It’s a modus operandi that has marked them out as true iconoclasts. “Lots of Turkish musicians are fundamentalists,” says co-founder and multi-instrumentalist Levent Akman. “They want it acoustic, and they hate Murat because he plays electric. We are trying to break these kinds of borders.”

Their latest album İstanbul Sokakları (Streets of Istanbul) contains no shortage of the hypnotic jams that have become their calling card. Across three extended pieces – the six-minute “Arsız Saksağan (Cheeky Magpie)”, the eight-minute “Yaprakların Arasından (In Between the Leaves)” and the eleven-minute “Yok Haddi Yok Hesabı (No Limits No Calculation)” – they delve deep into group meditations that surge and swell with relentless percussion, dark atmospherics constantly pushed into ecstatic peaks by the biting electric saz, and vocals by turns seductive and exhorting by Murat Ertel and female vocalist (and spouse), Esma Ertel.

On the album we also find characteristically strong fusions of modern vibes with traditional Turkish flavours. The catchy “Pisi Pisi Halayı” features an acid house squelch ornamented with Esma’s powerful vocals sung in the zilgit style – a type of ecstatic ululation found in Turkey (Türkiye) and throughout southwestern Asia.

On İstanbul Sokakları, BaBa ZuLa further pursue their quest to modernise Turkish musical tradition by examining a key element of Turkish classical music known as the taksim. Closely related to the alaap, which usually begins an Indian raga, the taksim was traditionally an improvised introduction in which the mood of a particular scale is established with melodic variations played over a root-note drone. “At the beginning of the 20th century, taksims were very popular in Turkish culture, but then this tradition slowly died,” Ertel states. “I was excited with the idea and really wanted to use it on the album.”

True to form, BaBa ZuLa present a whole new approach to the taksim – as Ertel explains: “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.”

İstanbul Sokakları presents four short but exquisitely detailed taksims built on lush, ambient drones, providing a showcase for some of Ertel’s most sensitive and delicate saz playing to date. And it’s within these 21st century taksims that İstanbul Sokakları establishes another innovation, and the album’s unifying concept. Nestled among their meditative moods are a collection of field recordings which, together, sketch out a love letter to BaBa ZuLa’s home, the teeming and ancient metropolis of Istanbul.

Here, Ertel draws on his own long-standing interest in recording everyday sounds, stretching back to childhood experiments with his father’s reel-to-reel tape recorder. He’s also profoundly influenced by the work of Korkmaz Çakar, a famed producer of Turkish radio plays. “He was a master of doing atmospheric sounds for these plays,” says Ertel. “I used to listen to them and, many years later, I befriended him. For the album, I use a mix of my own recordings and some of his recordings he did around Istanbul, starting in the 50s and up to today.”

So, in “İstanbul Express Divan Taksim,” we hear a vintage recording of a railway announcer calling out the departure of a train leaving Istanbul for Munich. “Çarşı Pazar Bağlama Taksimi” conjures the sound of merchants in a street bazaar hawking their wares. “Bosphorus Cura Taksim,” with its boat horns and keening gulls, is redolent of that great waterway that cuts through Istanbul. And “Güzel Bahçe Taksimi (Beautiful Garden Taksim)” captures the sound of birds sweetly singing in the Ertels’ own private garden.

With its focus on challenging the conservative status quo, İstanbul Sokakları explicitly addresses issues faced by progressive thinkers in today’s Turkey (Türkiye). It is, in every way, a deeply political statement. Most powerfully, “Arsız Saksağan” is an openly anti-government song fuelled by a sense of rage about the injustices of global capitalism. Ertel explains: “The wild lust of sucking every cell out of all living things by the powerful ruling class minorities and thus getting richer faster is everywhere around the world and it’s rising and rising. The prices of food and the evil ways of governments and corporations are on the rise.” Lyrically, Ertel intones a litany of disgrace, “To the media that dazzles, to the journalists who are silenced, to the people imprisoned just for defending.”

But it’s not all about despair. On “Yok Haddi Yok Hesabı,” while Ertel bemoans hyper-inflation and the increasingly fast pace of the world, Esma counters by calling us to remember the true meaning of life and what really matters: “The day does not turn there, the moment is remembered… money is not valid there, glory walks in the sky of the brave.” As Ertel states: “We see and feel the injustice strongly but even under heavier pressure the resistance exists, which is so vital and gives us the courage to continue living a meaningful life.”

Moreover, with the rise of the far-right across Europe, Akman is convinced it’s time for BaBa ZuLa’s message to be heard. “This album is not only for Türkiye, but for the world,” he says. “We need this kind of political album more. We’ll fight fascists and neo-Nazis with our music. All together, we must fight. And we will beat them.”

01. Haller Yollar / Ways & Circumstances (05:06)
02. Şahin Iksiri / Falcon Potion (01:14)
03. Kızıl Gözlüm / My Scarlet Eyed (04:06)
04. Rüzgarın Akışı / The Flow Of The Wind (02:44)
05. Salıncaksın / U Are The Swing (04:07)
06. Kervan Yolda / Caravan On The Road (03:21)
07. Port Pass (02:06)
08. Kosmogoni (02:20)
09. Kurt Kapma / Eagle Gets Wolf (03:13)
10. Transendance (05:07)

Art… it’s a way to keep sane in the dark times, to fight, to grasp at life. For Turkey’s BaBa ZuLa, art is their existence. It’s part of everything the Istanbul band does. As band founder and electric saz player Osman Murat Ertel explains: “Art is our language. We’re an art group” And on Derin Derin, their first studio album in five years, they create their art with beautiful eloquence and stinging passion. It takes wing and soars high.

And that’s perhaps as it should be; the instrumental portion of the disc grew out of music BaBa ZuLa were asked to record for a documentary about falcons.

“We learned a lot about the birds while we were making the soundtrack,’ Ertel explains. “After we’d completed it, we began to think about new layers and elements we could add.” So it grew, little by little, drawing together the elements that have been the heart of the band’s sound throughout its existence: the rich wildness of Turkish psychedelia and the blinding, pure emotion that runs through traditional Anatolian music, tempered with the constant musical questing of the band’s inspiration, Krautrock pioneers Can, and the electro-dub experiments BaBa ZuLa has undertaken with producer Mad Professor. It’s an utterly 21^st century sound, where the voices are sometimes submerged, sometimes screaming loud to breaking through the noise. Derin Derin is music for our dangerous times. But, as Ertel notes, “Culture is danger.”

Any band becomes like a family, especially one that’s been together for more than two decades, but the sense of family took on deeper overtones for the songs here. Ertel and his wife composed one of the pieces, and most of the words to “U Are the Swing” came from his young son.

“We were at the park and I was pushing him on a swing. He started singing the words to me. I was crying with happiness, it was such a strong experience for me. I tried to get down everything he sang, and later I added more.”

It’s a track that carries particularly profound echoes of Can’s late drummer, Jaki Liebezeit. The drum part was played by Ertel’s children on a kit Liebezeit himself had modified, and Liebezeit sat in with BaBa ZuLa on many occasions.

“After losing him, I understood just how big an influence he was,’ Ertel recalls. “He was like a mentor without even realising it, and he could play those Turkish rhythms excellently.”

Those rhythms form the bedrock of BaBa ZuLa’s sound, just as they were the foundation of the early Turkish psychedelia of the 1960s and ‘70s that has been a lifelong influence on Ertel.

“The early 45s were mostly traditional songs covered by the bands. It was wild and electric, but it kept the link to the past. Those were the records I asked my family to buy, the ones I grew up with, alongside artists like Miriam Makeba, Harry Belafonte, and the Red Army choir.”

Psychedelia seeped into his soul and helped to frame his vision for BaBa ZuLa when he formed the band in 1996. And throughout their existence, they’ve kept their unique mix of electric saz and electric oud to give that double fretboard attack that’s so markedly not Western.

“Both instruments are electrified,” Ertel explains, “but that’s all they have in common. They belong to different cultures. The oud is Middle Eastern and classical while the saz comes from Turkish folk music. Nobody else has ever mixed electrified versions of these two instruments together, but it  truly works. Even the frequencies of the instruments are well-balanced against each other.”

The psychedelic sound of BaBa ZuLa also feeds quite organically into dub. On “Eagle Got Wolf”, for instance, phrases and riffs echo and hang suspended in the air as the bass dives and swoops, while plucked notes appear, only to flicker away again. The band have learned from their work with Mad Professor, and it’s definitely no exaggeration when Ertel says “our dub influences are very strong.”

But it’s dub in a new context, an experiment in music.  Derin Derin is very much an album of today. It melds the past into the present and sends it flying into the future. Even the band photo on the cover sees the past flowing into the present.

“We used a technique from 150 years ago, a photograph taken on a glass plate that had to be prepared with silver and albumen. Then we manipulated it digitally. The visual elements are an important part of who we are – the presentation, the pictures, everything.”

When the world is so volatile and evil can raise its head so easily, we need artists who won’t be cowed, who will be fearless and take chances. We need musicians who sing the truth.

“My father and my uncle were artists,” Ertel says. “I grew up watching and hearing them. I learned that the barriers between area of art can be broken. I think there’s a consciousness awakening, but it will take time to grow. We keep pushing.”

From the 19^th century to the ‘60s through to today, art is a continuum and BaBa ZuLa understand that. Derin Derin is its latest incarnation. It’s fearless music. It’s the truth. And there is hope.

1. Kızıl gözlüm / My Scarlet Eyed
2. Kervan yolda / Caravan On The Road (Schneider TM remix)
3. Kervan yolda / Caravan On The Road (Arastaman remix)

BaBa ZuLa, the legendary ensemble from Istanbul, have brilliantly established themselves over the past two decades as the missing link between Turkish Psych, Krautrock and dubwise stylings.
The Kızıl Gözlüm EP, the first follow-up to their career spanning retrospective “XX,” finds the band more experimental and expansive than ever.

The 3-track EP features exploratory versions of songs from their upcoming Glitterbeat album “Derin Derin” (out in September).

Side A: Kızıl Gözlüm (My Scarlet Eyed)
Kızıl Gözlüm was arranged and produced by founding member of BaBa ZuLa, Murat Ertel. The 12” version is a wired reinvention of the original album track. The sound is psychedelic urban folk rock where the Turkish Huseini maqam is synched with synth drums. The track also includes bendir (frame drum) and spoon performances by the band’s other founder Levent Akman and the grandioso electric oud of master Periklis Tsoukalas. While it is a love song, it nevertheless is spiked with crazed, passionate electric saz solos from Ertel.

Side B: Kervan Yolda (Schneider TM Remix) / Kervan Yolda (Arastaman Remix)
On the flip side there are two radical re-interpretations of Kervan Yolda (also from the new album). The first one is by Schneider TM (a.k.a. Dirk Dresselhaus), a seminal fixture of the vibrant Berlin electronic scene. Schneider TM treats this road song in his own dark but playful manner. The atmosphere is thick, the groove powerful and the chopped and granularized vocals first morph and then return the story to real life.

The second remix is by the resident engineer of BaBa ZuLa – Arastaman – who maintains a parallel existence as an electro madman in the band Dub Again. Aquatic and hermetic the mix pulls us deep into the wide open space between the beats and the notes. The space where all true dub resides.

The labels for the EP were designed by Esma & Murat Ertel and feature the work of Mengü Ertel, the father of Murat who was an internationally renowned graphic artist.

CD 1:
01. Özgür ruh / Free Spirit / 2004
02. Gerekli şeyler / Essential Things / 2004
03. Erotika hop / 1997
04. Biz size aşık olduk / We Fell In Love With You (TV version) / 2002
05. Seksek / Hopscotch / 2001
06. Cecom / 2002
07. Aşıkların sözü kalır / Eternal Is The Word Of Poets / 2016
08. Efkarlı yaprak / Worried Leaf / 2016
09. Carino: La yegros / feat. Baba Zula/ 2015
10. Yororo kanto: Oki Dub Ainu Band / feat. Baba Zula / 2014
11. Bir sana bir de bana / One For You And One For Me / Delayaman / 2016
12. Çöl aslanları / Desert Lions / 2004 / Live Berlin Bada
13. Abdülcanbaz / 2013 / Live Pireas Resistance Festival

CD 2:
01. Alem Dub – 2016
02. Nobey Dub – 2016
03. Ufak Dub – 2016
04. Iki Alem Dub – 2016 – Dr Das (Asian Dub Foundation)
05. KK Dub – 2016 – Tolga Tolun
06. Hopche Dub – 2016 – Dirtmusic
07. Park Dub – 2009 – Uchi Uchida
08. Lemon Dub – 2009 – Uchi Uchida
09. Adultress Dub – 2005 – Mad Professor
10. BSAO Dub – 2005 – Mad Professor
11. Divan Dub – 2005 – Mad Professor
12. Meçhul Plak Dub (lost record dub) – 2003
13. Israr Dub – 2002
14. Erotik Adab Dub – 2002 – Mad Professor
15. Analog Anadolu Dub – 2000

A kaleidoscopic, two-disc, career-spanning compilation from Istanbul’s revered psychedelic explorers. Esteemed collaborators include Sly & Robbie, Mad Professor, Dr. Das of Asian Dub Foundation, Alexander Hacke (Einstürzende Neubaten) and more. Without a doubt one of the planet’s great musical adventures.

All too often these days, the world can feel like a dark and dangerous place. But music remains a light in the bleakness, offering a constant sense hope and joy and celebration. In Turkey the ominous shadows have been growing longer for several years but Baba Zula have been a shining beacon for 20 years, bringing the West and the Orient together in a glory of Istanbul psychedelia. To celebrate those two decades of existence, XX brings together tracks from across Baba Zula’s history, along with a second album of dubs created by artists like Mad Professor. Dr. Das of Asian Dub Foundation, and Dirtmusic.

“We wanted to have a compilation that was a little different,” explains group founder and electric saz player Osman Murat Ertel. “None of the pieces here are in their original forms. Instead, we picked remixes, re-recordings, collaborations, live tracks, all the possibilities, but none of these have been released before. And it’s a mix of recording techniques – digital, analogue, tape, mp3.”

Formed by Ertel and Levent Akman in 1996, Baba Zula took Turkish psychedelic pioneers of the 1960s like Moğollar as their inspiration and foundation for what they called Istanbul psychedelia, the fathers of a scene that’s since grown up around them.

“Those original bands of the ‘60s grew out of traditional Anatolian music,” Ertel says. “But the coups of the 1970s and ‘80s put an end to any experimentation. We picked up the reins to make music for the 21^st century with electric instruments, effects, and machines, something contemporary and unique. I always tell people that they might not like us, but no one can say we’re not original!”

Baba Zula came into existence when Ertel’s previous outfit, ZeN, was asked to create a soundtrack by a director friend. Ertel and two other members were interested, and the band grew from that seed, with music for films very much a part of their output.

Since that small beginning, Baba Zula have played all over the world, won awards for their work in film and theatre, often been rewarded at the Turkish Billboard awards, and had their albums counted among the most prestigious ever released in Turkey. They’ve also built a global network of like-minded performers, experimental souls in all genres of music, working with people as varied as Turkish opera singer Semiha Berksoy, dub mixer Mad Professor, and Can drummer Jaki Liebzeit. And that, to Ertel, is one of the band’s great successes.

“It’s exciting to collaborate with people you listened to when you were young. It’s a great inspiration and a huge fulfilment in dreaming something and having it come true. And it becomes a link of friendship.”

Those links and the band’s deep and fascinating history are displayed in widescreen on XX. “Biz Size Aşik Olduk” (We Fell In Love With You), for instance, is the only song they’ve ever created for a television serial, one that catapulted them to popularity all across Turkey.

“I went to the market the day after it was shown,” Ertel recalls. “As soon as the girl at the cash desk knew who I was, she began singing it.”

But Baba Zula have always believed that music needs to make a powerful statement, and they’ve never pulled punches in their lyrics. On XX, both “Aşiklarin Sözü Kalir” (Eternal Is The Word Of Poets) and “Efkarli Yaprak” (Worried Leaf) make their points very eloquently.

“They’re both re-interpretations of songs we’ve released,” Ertel says. “They appeared on different albums, but we wanted to re-record them so they were closer to our live sound. The first is about how the words of the talking heads and politicians become meaningless so quickly, but what poets say resonate through the centuries. I wrote the second song for my uncle, who was a journalist. He and others fought with their pens and pencils, even though they were tortured and jailed. He died four years ago, and I composed this as a celebration of him.”

In typically perverse and playful fashion, although their biggest ‘hit’ – “Bir Sana Bir De Bana” (One For You And One For Me) – is here, it’s not the original Baba Zula version of the song, but one featuring a duet between an Armenian man and a French woman.

The disc closes with a pair of previously unreleased live tracks. “Çöl Aslanlari” (Desert Lions) was mixed by Einstürzende Neubaten’s Alexander Hacke, while “Abdülcanbaz” is taken from a performance at the Resistance Festival in Piraeus, Greece, with Ertel’s electric saz powering and pushing the group higher and higher over a swell of percussion, electric oud, effects, and vocals. They’re long, mesmeric cuts, the pulsing of an ancient Turkish soul in a very modern band.

“They’re very raw recordings,” Ertel agrees, “but they have power. A record made in the studio is very different to a concert. We’ve never put out a live album, so I wanted to show that side of us.”

And now, with 20 years behind them, what’s next for Baba Zula?

“I never thought it would last this long,” Ertel admits. “Maybe another 20 years is possible, maybe not. But living here in Turkey, I don’t know about the future. I hope the band could continue without me. We give our messages very carefully for those who can understand them. But I do know it’s important to carry on; you can be gone anytime.”

Baba Zula:

Osman Murat Ertel:
electric and acoustic saz, vocals, electric and acoustic guitar, synth, percussion, bass, theremin

Mehmet Levent Akman:
Machines, electronics, cymbals, spoons, bendir, percussion

Featuring:
Sly and Robbie: 1-2 drums and bass
Mehmet Güreli: 1 vocals
Hüsnü Şenlendirici: 1-4 clarinet
Özkan Uğur: 2 vocals
Emre Onel: 3-5 sampler and percussion
Oya Erkaya: 4-6 bass
Brenna Mac Crimmon: 6-7 vocals
Oki: 10 tonkori
Alexander Hacke: 12 bass
Melike Şahin: 7-8 vocals
Periklis Tsoukalas: 7-8-9-13 electric oud
Can Aydemir: 13 bass