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5 Years Of Happiness

Altın Gün return with a masterful album that widens their critically acclaimed exploration of Anatolian rock and Turkish psychedelic stylings to include dreamy 80’s synth-pop and dancefloor excursions. Yol (Road) brings together all vectors of the AltınGün experience and delivers their most compelling and individual album to date.Amsterdam’s Altın Gün have built a strong reputation for melding past and present to make brilliantly catchy, psychedelic pop music, as seen with their Grammy-nominated second album, Gece. They are also a renowned live band with strings of sold-out shows on three continents, who have consistently brought a muscular groove to their recordings. Yol, their third album in as many years, excitedly continues these trends; while also digging in deep to unveil a new palette of sonic surprises. Though it draws from the rich and incredibly diverse traditions of Anatolian and Turkish folk music, Yol is not just a record that reframes traditional sounds for a contemporary audience. The album often presents a textured, avant-pop sound as evidenced by the debut single "Ordunun Dereleri.” Mysterious and atmospheric, the track is a thrilling evolution for the band. It patiently coaxes the listener into a resonant soundworld of down-tempo electro beats, majestic synths and Erdinç Ecevit's yearning vocal of unrequited love. The album also signals a very different approach in making and recording for the band. Singer Merve Dasdemir takes up the story: “We were basically stuck at home for three months making home demos, with everybody adding their parts. The transnational feeling maybe comes from that process of swapping demos over the internet, some of the music we did in the studio, but lockdown meant we had to follow a different approach.”Yol displays a noticeable dreaminess, maybe born from this enforced time to reflect. And select elements of late 1970s or early 1980s “Euro” synth pop also shines through. This new musical landscape was nurtured by certain instrument choices; namely the Omnichord, heard on ‘Arda Boylari’, ‘Kara Toprak’ and ‘Sevda Olmasaydi’, and the drum-machine, an instrument that is key to the gorgeous closing number, ‘Esmerim Güzelim’. Dasdemir once more: “bass player Jasper Verhulst loved the song. He said, ‘it doesn’t sound like Altın Gün, this sounds like a Turkish kindergarten music teacher from the 1980s using an 808!”As ever, the tracks are the result of a true group effort, with ideas on Omnichord, 808 and other elements - such as field recordings and new age-esque ideas - continually kicked about between the six band members. At a safe distance of course. The record also owes something special to its production team, the band working this time with Asa Moto (the Ghent-based producer-crew, Oliver Geerts and Gilles Noë) who mixed the record. Before this Altın Gün always recorded on tape with their own sound engineer.It would be wrong to say that what made Altın Gün such a loved and successful band has been left to one side. The pressure-cookers ‘Sevda Olmasaydı’ and ‘Maçka Yolları’ are classic cuts from the band. And their signature employment of a dizzying array of ideas and approaches can be heard with the marked Brazilian feel of ‘Kara Toprak’ and ‘Yekte’. Cosmic reggae filters through the grooves of ‘Yüce Dağ Başında’, and there is a steaming version of ‘Hey Nari’ which gives the traditional composition by Ali Ekber Çiçek a kick onto the dancefloor. But with Yol, Altın Gün have maybe patented their own magical process of reimagining and sonic path-finding, one probably not heard since the late 1960s and early 1970s British folkrock boom. Less of a reworking than a seduction, their recordings transport the listener to a world where the original songs never previously inhabited. Merve Dasdemir again: “After we worked on them, they got a whole new life of their own. Maybe we went a little bit too far (laughs).”

ABT024 - CA - 2012Tender Opposites by TOPS

Ugo Busoni's “Valvole” is a classic example of the so-called library music records released – between the end of the Sixties and up to the Nineties – in Italy as in the rest of the world, in order to provide 'background music' to be used in the editing of news broadcasts, radio and newsreels. These were records made by highly experienced composers and musicians who, in a very short time and with limited or non-existent budgets, had to make music to be synchronized to images. For obvious reasons, they had to be tracks of short duration, characterized by a certain didactic 'formalism' that allowed an immediate choice for their main use.The titles given to the compositions had to recall a specific topic or setting that would make the choice of technicians easy for synchronization. Tokyo, Uscita Da Scuola, Raid, Polvere Cosmica, Su Una Nuvola, Controspionaggio and Starne are, not surprisingly, some of the titles of the tracks of this album published more than forty years ago by Nuova Idea. Sounds from the Far East, folky and rock guitars, psychedelic rhythms, avant-garde tunes, cosmic echoes and much more are some of the elements of one of the most indecipherable records of that historical period, reissued for the first time on vinyl by Musica Per Immagini with a brand new artwork.

Sophomore release from Toronto dream-duo Joseph Shabason and Ben Gunning, this time a more cosmopolitan affair, mapping fragmented cityscapes from bent electronics and late-night FM jazz transmissions.The boys are back in town. After recording their debut in a remote cottage in Northern Ontario, the duo relocated their jams to Shabason’s Toronto studio where they gained unlimited access to a virtual cornucopia of analog and digital gear and had the time to really push those instruments to the brink. In the crisp autumnal sessions the duo consciously set out to make Ample Habitat with a fresh slate; not a single melody or patch was smuggled in on a USB stick. Fuelled with off-brand club soda, the ethos was to infuse the sessions and the music itself with a sense of discovery. Another perk of the new locale was being closer to friends and neighbours; TO music-scene luminaries Kieran Adams, Bram Gielen, and Thom Gill dropped in, rounding out a full jam band for the convivial B-side surprise “Is Jubilee.” Although the album calls on a wild menagerie of digital voices, the heart is warm and human, favouring performance and play over presets and quantization. If J Dilla was able to teach an MPC jazz, Shabason / Gunning aim to teach their hardware the ECM version.