Wild Flowers of Anatolia

PRODUCT DESCRIPTION
Albüm içeri?i: Silencing the Nightingales - Bülbülleri Susturuyorlar (5:12) Power, Order and Wealth - ?ktidar. Düzen ve Zenginlik (4:19) Rocks - Kayalar (2:37) Waves - Dalgalar (8:01) Incident Follows Incident - Olaylar Birbirini Takip Eder (2:18) Halfway There - Yolu Yar?lad?m (4:00) Song Of The Tourist Board - Ruhun ?çeriden Erozyonu (2:07) God - Tanr? (5:20) What Do You Mean to Me? - Benim ?çin Ne ?fade Ediyorsun? (5:26) Strange Ideas About Spirits - Ruhlara Dair Tuhaf Fikirler (10:08) Sulukule (3:37) Things Calm Down - Her ?ey Sakinle?ir (Orijinal Dili:Enstrümantal)

REVIEW
Cris Potts's review: An exhilarating and astonishing album from singer, British-born Istanbul-based Nikolai Galen (whom fRoots readers may know better as sometime scribe and music promoter Nick Hobbs) and Murat Ertel, electric saz master from Turkey's Baba Zula. Drummer Gokce Gurcay completes the trio: a 21st Century avant-psych English language Turkish folk- rock trio would be a reductionist (and unwieldy!) label, but worthwhile if it piques interest in this extraordinary suigeneris music making. The music inhabits, and traverses beyond, a zone that includes Baba Zula, Beefheart, Turkish bozlak singing, Julie Tippett s vocal improv, all within a variety of interest- ing and accessible song and rhythmic structures. This double CD album marries the seductive mysteries of the electric saz melody hooks and ornamentation, through to electrifying riffs both heavy and funky at times and Nick s vocals which carry the songs verses and melody, and also run to whispers, whistles, growls and declamations. As for those verses (all in English, and inspired by Turkey: land, people, buildings, society, systems, events, nature), a humane and politically engaged voice emerges, non- dogmatic, impassioned. A beautifully presented album, with paintings by Emir Uras, a knowing correspondence to Aysenur Kolivar s Honeysuckle For The Garden release. The Anatolian blues have never been heard like this before, an unmissable and important release, I reckon. www.voiceofshade.net --fRoots no.391

Mike Barnes's review: Vocalist Nikolai Galen - who is British and long ago used to be Nick Hobbs of The Shrubs - has lived in Istanbul since 2003 where he has worked with Russian singer and instrumentalist Sadko Space Angel as Galen Sadko, as well as exploring solo vocal improvisation in performance and on disc (see 2004's briliant Emanuel Vigeland). In Istanbul after successful attempts to produce his own version of Anatolian blues music with more traditional saz players, he met the group Baba Zula, which is Murat Ertel on various forms of acoustic and electric saz and Macedonian tamboura (who has played with the likes of Fred Frith and Can drummer Jaki Liebezeit), and percussionist Gökçe Gürcay. Together they are Eis Ten Polin. There's a loose, partly improvised feel to many of the compositions, and on Silencing the Nightingales, Galen sings in a sort of forced whisper, as if gathering strength to face an onslaught from speculators, predators, construction company plunderers making up the advance guard of global capitalism that is running our idyll, while producer Dolf Planteijdt plays wah-wah guitar. Listening to the first part of this double CD sets feels like being at a live performance in that it follows a standard concert trajectory from an absorbing beginning that eventually builds up up a momentum into something gripping. There's a psychedelic approach employed with the backwards saz and Waves, where Galen's voice begins to uncoil in long held tones; and it all explodes on Incident Follows Incident, with its thrilling, intense interplay between the electric saz and Gürcay's hyperactive drumming, as Galen's voice ripples like a flag in the wind. Halfway There keeps up the intensity with electric saz played at dazzling speed in what sounds like serpentine hard rock cut with disorientating passages in waltz time. The acoustic Interdependent System features one of Galen's most impressive vocal performances, rich with extravagant melismas, as he identifies a threat from a rising tide of urban violence. Calm reigns for a time while we stockpile weapons, he sings ominously. Cockroaches and Rats concerns the Gezi Park protest in Istanbul in 2013, in which peaceful demonstrators were violently evicted from their occupation of a site previously marked for urban development. The musicians move from heavy blues rock, albeit played with the subtlety and rhythmic élan of more traditional Turkish forms, to freeform sections to noise wig-outs of concentrated fury. --The Wire no.388

Richard Foster's review: I like records that don t fit , that can t be explained easily. And Wild Flowers Of Anatolia the LP by Istanbul-based trio, Eis Ten Polin is one of them. I ve had this record the best part of a year and still have no real idea how to describe it. I ve listened to it loads during this time, appreciating that there is a lot going on, but also aware that there is a poppy simplicity and directness to it that could make an attempt at a detailed socio-political or contextual review sound pompous and off-putting. It s worth saying from the off that Wild Flowers Of Anatolia is a meandering but glorious record, chronicling the band s own (personal) thoughts on the socio-political situation in Turkey. The personal is the key. Though it has a strong message (however much I don t fully comprehend it) the record is ultimately impervious to anything but its own heartbeat; especially when Baba Zula s Mura Ertel starts laying down the law. Which just makes it great to listen to, as music. Still, given the record was recorded in 2015, and in the light of recent events in Turkey, you can t escape that large chunks of this record feel somewhat prophetic. Even the packaging gives an indication of the heavy trip to come. We get two CDs, one named Smyrna, the other Salonica, both clocking in round the hour mark and encased in a sturdy CD book; replete with a fine set of notes boasting a whole sheaf of lyrics in Turkish and English. For those of a studious bent the CD pack gives plenty of brainfood to digest, or, for those of a more hedonistic mood, to skin up on. To give the record some further context for our jaded Western palettes, this is also the work of Nick Hobbs (here going under the name of Nikolai Galen) once of ace band The Shrubbs (another band who worked with Dolf Lanteijdt, of Koeienverhuurbedrijf studio fame). Wild Flowers. does have some similarities with their bouncing, jalopy beats and goggle eyed vox on their 1987 LP, Take Me Aside For A Midnight Harangue. Back to the music. This record can be ingested in two ways. Firstly, you can let it all wash over you in a stupor in one sitting and then try to chart a course back to everyday time. Which is a great way to listen if you are in the mood to get onto a different psychic-spiritual plane. The second is to really pay some attention to the text in the booklet whilst digging the meandering, arabesque structures. Watch out for some arresting lyrics and clauses floating out of this stew. There are far too many to single out, but blood-written get out clause is one and trails of scandals writhe like snakes / stuffed into bags and left behind the gates is another. I m not sure and certainly no expert, but these musical and vocal extemporisations feel like an attempt to throw elements of Turkish classical and chamber folk into a modern context (courtesy of the Baba Zula connection) and wild-eyed ur-hippy meanderings (a sort of Pinkwind/Gong/Fairport/Soft Boys jam) onto a canvas and see what sticks. The socio-political elements come on a bit like Julian Cope s mid 2000 s groovier,more meandering releases; stuff like Rome Wasn t Burned In A Day, or You Gotta Problem With Me? Or, more esoterically, Amon Düül kicking out the jams on Yeti Meets Yogi (imagine the taproom jam that would have spawned that particular Kraut monster). Overall there is some fabulous playing; and things get very raga as the tessellate, crystalline sounds spiral upwards into the firmament and underpin the frenzied vocal digressions. I really dig the coughing fit in the strung out rocker, Sulukule. Nick Hobbs probably means to cough but you know what I mean. Well worth hunting down, this record. Just ensure you have the time to let it all soak in. --http://louderthanwar.com/eis-ten-polin-wild-flowers-of-anatolia/

Number of Discs: 1

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