Abstract Index playlist - October 25/06

It's official - 2006 is the year of Funky Turkey. And if you haven't cleaned out your fridge from Thanksgiving's leftovers, I'm sure you can relate to some funky turkey...

I'm certainly not the first guy to stumble on the majesty of Turkish prog/psych - I should watch that terminology coz them's fighting words if used in the wrong circles - but there does seem to have been a spike in reissues lately.

Whereas someone like Edip Akbayram was a certifiable rock god in Turkey , this album by Mustafa Ozkent is somewhat more obscure. Ozkent arranged for the A-list of Turkish rockers in the 70s, but put this instrumental album out as a lark. It promptly failed, and he went back to arranging.

The sample monster that dwells deep in my soul has counted a good half dozen freestyle-friendly breaks on this album. The bio from Finders Keepers records plays up the sampladelicacy of the disc, describing it as the "Turkish Incredible Bongo Band". With two drummers, a percussionist, a bassist who likes to play lead, and a brace of psychedelic, custom built guitars screaming at you from across the stereo spectrum, that seems about right.

Some thoughts-

1) Anyone who still believes that the explosion of youth culture which occurred at the end of the 60s was confined to California and the UK had best look at its reverberations around the world. There is more and more material available from places as diverse as Turkey, Peru, and Thailand which show that youth, drugs and grooves were a potent combo everywhere in the world. Let's not even get into the Bollywood of that era.

2) There will be more and more examples of these kinds of obscure one off recordings as different countries yield more pet projects of musicians behind the scenes with access to studio downtime get together to create experimental, maybe marginal, yet danceable music. The stories of Ozkent, the Incredible Bongo Band, Boris Gardiner (Jamaica) or Maranata (Uruguay) seem similar in this way.

The only disappointment, as my friend Cam noted, is that the music wasn't actually performed by the monkey on the cover.

the circle - badawi (ROIR)
god bless the ottoman empire - a hawk and a hacksaw (leaf)
requiem for a fox - sandro perri (constellation)
hazel - hassle hound (staubgold)
emmioglu - mustafa ozkent (finders keepers)
freedom flexibility - kahil el zabar's ritual trio (delmark)
thunder in our hearts - jabula (counterpoint)
ocean wave - the ripple effect (golden beams)
52 incorporated - tinkertoy (noise factory)
me done - ari up rmx. by light in the attic)
enseralen gojo (remix) - bole 2 harlem (sounds of the mushroom)
radio-waves - vektor (independent)
hooligan (extended mix) - john holt (studio one/soul jazz)
all the time lyric a rhyme - tippa irie (soul jazz)
in a dis yah time - sugar minott (moll-selekta)
scientist's earth dub - roots radics/scientist (roots)
trompet - djosos krost (quango)
upfull living - augustus pablo (shanachie)