Altın Gün
Altin Gün make music that unites. They made a name for themselves by revising Turkish tradition in psychedelic, funk, and disco music, and by being nominated for a Grammy in 2019. With their latest album “Aşk,” they bring us back to their roots. They are worth listening to, and as one of their vocalists, Merve Dasdemir, admits in an interview with Rolling Stone Italia, they are "worthy of an anthropological study."
From left, Erdinc Ecevit, Merve Dasdemir and Jasper Verhulst of Altin Gun performing in Amsterdam in 2019.Credit...Ben Houdijk
Who are Altin Gün?
The band Altin Gün, which in Turkish means "golden day," formed in 2016 in Amsterdam by the union of Turkish and Dutch musicians. They came together with an idea: revisit the Turkish folk tradition by merging it in a sonic magma of psych rock, 1970s funk, Italo disco, and influences ranging from Jimi Hendrix, to Kraftwerk, all the way to Tame Impala. The members of the band are Jasper Verhulst, Erdinç Ecevit Yildiz, Merve Dasdemir, Daniel Smienk, Chris Bruining, and Thijs Elzinga. They formed the band for fun and ended up being nominated for a Grammy in 2019 in the category of Best World Music Album with their second album “Gece”. It is safe to say they are one of the most interesting bands of recent years.
Albums
They have released a total of five albums to date, which, in chronological order, are “On” in 2018, “Gece” in 2019, “Yol” and “Âlem” in 2021, and their latest album “Aşk”, released in 2023. The latter was supposed to be released on the 10th of March 2023. However, the earthquake in Turkey and Syria in February of that year prompted the six members of the group to postpone the release to the 31st of the same month and launch various fundraisers. They organized a concert in Amsterdam, with which they managed to raise more than 40,000 euros, and donated the proceeds of their YouTube release of "Güzelliğin on Para Etmez", a tribute to the Turkish singer, musician, and poet Âşık Veysel, to the International Red Cross.
Via Altın Gün
Aşk
The sound in their latest album, Aşk, is intriguing. They put together a powerful rhythm section: bass, drums, and percussion, which can really be seen as the core of their music. It is joined by guitars, keyboards, synthesizers, and the baglama, the typical Turkish stringed instrument, a kind of long-handled lute with a deep sound, played by Erdinç, one of the band's vocalists. Many people might think that their goal is to make psychedelic music; however, Merve Dasdemir, the other vocalist of the band, during the interview with Rolling Stone Italia with Raffaella Oliva, admitted that they have never decided anything in advance. She says that it is the instruments that, in dialogue with each other, take them in that direction. There was a clear difference in sound between their first two albums and the latter two albums. With the album Aşk, it almost seems like they have brought back the method behind their first two albums. Merve states in the interview that the pandemic had forced them to go digital, while now they are back where they started: they lock themselves in a room and play the tracks live, recording everything in analog, on tape, admitting they now feel like a real live band. She adds that it is no coincidence that the album is titled Aşk. This term refers to a particularly intense version of love and perfectly reflects what they feel when they play together.
From the Beginnings to Now
The importance of the stage has been a focus since the beginning for Altin Gün. The group was initially formed by the Dutch bassist Jasper Verhulst, who was captivated by the Finders Keepers compilation "Selda," dedicated to Turkish artist Selda Bağcan. He was hoarding vinyls during several trips to Turkey, including a tour with Britain's Jacco Gardner. This captivation led him to share a post on social media and stick flyers in grocery stores and Turkish restaurants in Amsterdam, looking for Turkish singers and musicians to reinterpret old songs and folk standards from Turkey. Merve shared during the interview that when she saw his post on social media, she couldn’t believe it. Those were songs she listened to throughout her childhood. She immediately contacted him, and before long, the band was born.
At the beginning, they started small, just playing together and doing some gigs. In their first year together, they were primarily performing live. What really made them take off was a performance recorded for the KEXP sessions. Merve is sure about this because that is what they were told by fans present there; for many, it was their first time hearing them. Another paradigm shift was the myriad of concerts they did between 2016 and 2017, where they still did not have a released album; however, the increased hearsay helped. However, the real shift happened with the nomination for the Grammys for their album "Gece" in the Best World Music Album category. Merve stated in the interview that they couldn’t believe it. She admits, however, that awards are the least of their concerns; they are more interested in the relationship with the audience and consider themselves, in that respect, quite punk.
Influences
Vintage sounds, Middle Eastern melodies, Brazilian and Indian suggestions, polyrhythms, distortions, reverberations, sci-fi disco, and electronic beats all contribute to making Altin Gün's sound a fascinating proposition. Although their repertoire focuses on songs that are part of the collective imagination in Turkey, the group reinterprets this enormous heritage with a contemporary eye and much inventiveness. And you can’t help but think that in an age when almost everything sounds the same, and even the least trivial novelties tend toward rapid homogenization that ends up being boring, the contamination between different musical traditions still manages to provide surprises. Furthermore, the band states that their biggest muses are artists like Selda Bağcan, Barış Manço, and Erkin Koray, Turkish artists who really experimented with psychedelic rock in the 1960s and 1970s. Back then, all cultures were influenced by Western music with groups such as the Beatles and Pink Floyd. What artists like Bağcan, Manço, and Koray were doing, however, was mixing them with their own folk roots. This was visible also in Zambia with the so-called Zamrock, and with Thai psychedelia, for example. What Altin Gün is doing is actually a return to the past with today’s flavor, a real innovation compared to mainstream music. It is something more exotic, eclectic, and simply new.
Music for All
The great thing is that this builds a bridge between different cultures, which makes Altin Gün's concerts all-inclusive spaces of cosmopolitanism. "Initially, at the live shows, it was mostly Dutch, French, and German, but as the audience grew, it became more cross-cultural, and now it's an incredible mix of European hipsters and old Turkish ladies," Merve notes enthusiastically during the interview. "It's fun and it's great to see all these nationalities mixed together under the stage and to think that if they are there, in the same venue, it's because of what we do. I studied anthropology, and I think from that point of view, we are a case study." Obviously, when they perform in Turkey, it is a whole different experience. The audience knows the songs by heart and sings them at the top of their lungs.
In July, they went on tour in the States. Not bad for a band that sings in an idiom that not many people on this side of the world speak and understand. But that’s what they’re all about; they don’t want to focus on the understanding of the lyrics, they want the music to come to you regardless of the words. Their themes are the real focus, which includes love, loss, death, and exile in an extremely poetic language. At the heart are human emotions.
Crafting Their Music
One curiosity remains: by what criteria do Altin Gün select the songs for their records? Merve states in the interview that "Generally, it works that we take an old song and play it in the rehearsal room, just as it comes to us. If something good comes up, we go ahead; otherwise, we discard it. There is no definite rule, me and the other singer being Turkish have more of a say in it, but all band members can research and come up with titles and ideas, after which we decide together what is worth focusing on." She adds, "For me, being from Istanbul, it's easy. I know an infinite number of Turkish songs; they are part of my life, they are in my DNA. In the previous record, there was 'Yüce Dağ Başında,' a song that as a child I always heard sung in movies by a Turkish actor; I am very fond of it. While in 'Aşk,' there is 'Leylim Ley,' an intense, painful hymn from a short story by Sabahattin Ali, a writer who was brutally murdered as a young man in 1948. Zülfü Livaneli, a Turkish novelist and composer, has written wonderful music for this story about love and finding oneself far from home, from one's homeland. Perhaps my favorite track, though, is the closing track, 'Doktor Civanım': we completely twisted the original by slipping in a dose of Italo disco as well, and the result is a dance track to dance to, that conveys energy and positivity." Music can be a medium of unity, just like Altin Gün does. And as Merve said, it is music that is enjoyed by European hipsters and old Turkish ladies.
