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Re:konstruKt: New Music Online from Istanbul
?a?lar's development as a musician is a good example of the way Turkish improvisers have paved their own way: "We can talk about 'constructions' and 'constructed parts,'" he says. "I first started to make music by playing avant-garde, jazz, punk and noise stuff"—asked for some references, ?a?lar cites the early work of saxophonists
John Zorn
saxophone, altob.1953
Ornette Coleman
saxophone, alto1930 - 2015
John Coltrane
saxophone1926 - 1967
Heiner Goebbels
multi-instrumentalist
Steve Beresford
pianoAt the beginning, ?a?lar knew very little about harmony, melody or any other aspects of music theory. "When I started university I was interested in electronic music and I worked as a DJ. I was involved in some experimental projects with electronics, computers and this stuff. But when I started to play guitar I was able to mix and melt together my knowledge of electronic music with free guitar playing. Sometimes I feel like I'm playing a loop on my guitar, not looping it electronically but playing the loop myself. It's not common, there's something similar in the music of
Terry Riley
composer / conductorb.1935
Even if ?a?lar cites instinct as his first ignition, a look at the overall Istanbul scene shows a surprising degree of coherence. To get some context, listen to percussionist
Okay Temiz
percussionb.1939
Don Cherry
trumpet1936 - 1995
Pete La Roca
drums1938 - 2012
Ertun?, who lives in Bodrum and is also a painter, is ?a?lar's close friend. He appears as a percussionist in konstruKt's Vibrations of the Day (re:konstruKt, 2010), also featuring alto saxophonist
Marshall Allen
saxophone, altob.1924
Peter Brötzmann
woodwinds1941 - 2023
The team at re:konstruKt has become international, while the pool of local musicians involved numbers more than twenty. "It's something new, according to the whole avant-garde music history," says ?a?lar. "We're here doing this since two or three years right now, and I see there is a younger generation after us who have started to do similar things. It's good to have a feedback on that. Maybe we started something, and after ten years we'll see what we have done, and people can judge us for what we did, but right now we're in the middle of it. But after four years I can see progress. People look at us and say 'oh, they do strange stuff but they can handle it.'"
The konstruKt group started playing locally in small bars and clubs, but festival appearances followed and in 2009-10 it picked up some useful international profile. Canadian magazine Signal To Noise gave some coverage in 2009, followed by the UK's The Wire, which added a free CD to its December 2010 issue.
Social networking and the presence of prime international movers and shakers has been helpful not only in promoting the music but in making Istanbul a new "hot spot" for improvisation. "So many people are aware of what we do right now," says ?a?lar. "And Facebook and Myspace and other social networks help in spreading the name of the label and the band. When I say 'I'm from konstruKt,' or 'I'm from the re:konstruKt label,' they know of it. We are dealing with a bunch of Dutch organizations, and I think we're going to organize things, making and sharing records from Amsterdam to Istanbul and back, and also concerts and workshops.
"When I talk with musicians, they know that something is happening in Istanbul, that it is important. It wasn't a geographic center for improvised music until about two years ago. At that time,
Eugene Chadbourne
guitarb.1954
Aki Takase
pianob.1948
Dom Minasi
guitar1943 - 2023
Paul Adams
drumsb.1956
Jason Kao Hwang
composer / conductorb.1957
?a?lar and his team have released approaching 60 recordings, an impressive number, over the past three years. "Sometimes it's not easy to live on what you dream of. You have to make compromises or something, and so many times it's hard to keep going. I know so many people who are very open minded but doing the same mainstream things for years, just to earn money, and that's a problem. Actually we were like adventurers, because we were not anything commercially and we didn't earn so much money but we did what we liked. I don't want to be a leader, to say 'I want to keep the flag.' I'm only going to do what I do, and if I can be a good example for people around to do their own thing, that's my role."
Korhan Argüden / Umut ?a?lar / ?zün Usta
Rehearsals Pt. 3
2008
It's valuable to hear the first wails of a scene, the better to track its subsequent development. While Rehearsals_Pt. 3 is available on the re:konstruKt website, the first two volumes are still downloadable in the Internet Archives. Post—rockers such as Stormandstress or John Zorn's improv- grindcore Painkiller project can be a good reference as far as interplay, with the musicians mostly independent while interacting. The thick, sharp and melodically 'open' sound of the guitar creates a good contrast and varied texture with the interspersing dense drums and percussions, testifying also to the influence of electronic contemporary music, with the likes of Alvin Curran's MEV or
Keith Rowe
guitarb.1940
The League of Xtraordinary Gentlemen
Recorded Live at deFORM
2008
One of the most vital aspects of re:konstruKt has been its efforts to involve foreign musicians, well known and not so well known, from the start. This album features a guitar trio, testifying also an attitude towards unusual lineups. Irish-born
Mark O'Leary
guitarb.1969
Paul Bley
piano1932 - 2016
Han Bennink
drumsb.1942
Nels Cline
guitar, electricb.1956
Jaco Pastorius
bass, electric1951 - 1987
Selen Gülün
Selen Gülün
2009
Selen Gulun
pianob.1972
Islak K?pek
One Year Later Two Years Ago Pt.1
2009
Islak Kopek was the first band in Istanbul to play regularly improvised music. It started as a quintet in 2005 with regular concerts at Galata Perform and Jazz Café, then at the Akbank Jazz Festival in 2006 and at the Transit Festival in Istanbul with Le Quan Ninh. Its first album with the current line-up is from 2008, while One Year Later Two Years Ago on re:konstruKt were released in 2009. With no drums or percussion, two horns, two electric guitars, violin and various electronic tools played by Korhan Erel, Islak Kopek takes electroacustic improvisation to a sort of cameristic, even if muddy and electric, level.
Mecz?p
Hanging from the Purgatory's Pendulum
2009
To review a record currently unavailable might seem odd, but if that record was made by a young and talented musician and comprises eight compositions on theremin in which mastery and sensibility are unquestionable, it all makes sense. Hanging from the Purgatory's Pendulum offers to the listener a bath of pure melancholy. The melodies hark back to folk tunes, almost disembodied, while still recognizable in their essence, their mood. Cihan Gulbudak, aka Meczup—"letter"' in Turkish—works on sound. He is well conscious of his possibilities, making as concrete as possible the theremin's ghostly and far away sound without giving up its nuances. A good parallel would be that of
Zeena Parkins
harpSarp Keskiner
Retrospective I
2010
Sarp Keskiner is widely known as founder member of the Istanbul Blues Company, which, since 1993, has blended together acoustic rural blues and Turkish music for baglama—a long- necked string instrument related to the Greek bozouki and Persian saz. While the IBC is still acoustic and rooted in song-form music, Keskiner's music after his departure from the band in 1997 has been influenced by different ethnic flavours—from China and Far east in general, but also from Egypt—with an attempt to use concrete sounds like xylophones, plastic shakers, cans, gongs and bottles along with a wide use of loops, echoes and electronics, giving the sound a wide, spacey tinge. The material collected in this Retrospective was recorded at Acik Radyo, responsible for diffusing experimental material through the Turkish ether. To listen to that music means to get back to the roots of both
Sun Ra
piano1914 - 1993
Mauro Sambo
...di Origine Oscura
2010
Mauro Sambo is an Italian saxophonist, percussionist and bassist. Resident in Venice, he belongs to that host of figures who from the likes of reed player
Roscoe Mitchell
saxophoneb.1940
Anthony Braxton
woodwindsb.1945
Giray Gürkal
Signals From Heart
2010
Guitarist Giray Gurkal is a constant presence in re:konstruKt's development over the years. He appears on the label's second recording, Limbo's MonkeyPussy. An extremely creative player, in Signals From Heart, a solo guitar record—with the addition of a trumpet on track three—Gurkal deals with distorted signals and echoes, creating prolonged sounds and building a highly structured and personal language. Sounds a bit like Nels Cline and David Daniell mixed together, with influncees from electronic music in sound processing (even if with analog equipment), can help to contextualize the work of this young but bright musician.
Belorukov / Krotevich / Popovskiy
Wooden Plants: June '09
2011
During the 1990s and the beginning of the new millennium the world of music all around the globe was an incredible kaleidoscope of sounds: post-rock, improvisation, glitch music, the recovery of old avant-garde forms as minimalism, musique concrete, 'just intonation' or 'excited strings, as Arnold Dreyblatt would say. Forms were finally reopening, and noise was taken away from industrial-metal. As a result, people was still able to breathe open air even through the most apparently improper shapes. Wooden Plants is a good example of a direct or parallel result, but in line with an idea that treats musical instruments as object,s and vice versa, also giving space to natural sounds. It's always "soul music." Calling it only "avant-garde" would be too constraining.
Sabrina Siegel
Karma Trinley Drolma 2011
"More than executing notes or rhythms or melody, a song or a piece of music to me is a field for being—for direct living, feeling, breathing, and expressing in the moment." Sabrina Siegel is a guitarist, bassist and cymbalist. She plays guitars with rocks. Born in New York and brought up in California, Siegel now lives in Eugene, Oregon, dealing also with performances, photography and video art. The cover image for Karma Trinley Drolma is a detail from her Nature's Recomposition Buddha painting. Sabrina Siegel music has to do with situation of "not-knowing," the "precarious," the questioning of the relationship with "Nature/Body/Sound/Self/Music." But her records stand by themselves as complete and fresh pieces of music.
Tracks and Personnel
Rehearsals_3Tracks: Improvisation no.1; Improvisation no. 2; Improvisation no. 3; Improvisation no. 4.
Personnel: Korhan Argüden: drums; ?zün Usta: percussions, electric bass; Umut ?a?lar: guitar, electronics.
Recorded Live at deFORM
Tracks: Mobilis In Mobili Pt.1 & 2; The Mysterious Island.
Personnel: Mark O'Leary : guitar, fx; ?evket Ak?nc?: guitar, objects, fx; Umut ?a?lar: guitar, electronics.
Selen Gülün
Tracks: Bir; ??; D?rt; Be?; Alt?; Yedi; Sekiz; Onbe?.
Personnel: Selen Gülün: piano.
One Year Later Two Years Ago Pt. 1
Tracks: 1th Piece; 2th Piece; 3th Piece.
Personnel: Robert Reigle: tenor saxophone; Volkan Terzio?lu: tenor saxophone, clarinet; ?evket Ak?nc?: electric guitar; Dirk Stromberg: electric guitar, violin; Korhan Erel: computer, melodica, cracklebox
Hanging from the Purgatory's Pendulum
Tracks: A Tale For Lancinant Screws; Kwaidan; Garoun; Puriest Morning of All Times; Blossom in Cemetery Shadow: A Parable; The Ribald Genie; The Bridge of Khazad-dum .
Personnel: Cihan Gülbudak: theremin & fx.
Retrospective I (1997—2007)
Tracks: F?rt?na; Pain In The Mass; Hsiao Hsiao The Chinese Freak; That's Very Nile Of You; Lost Spirits Of Incas; Siberian Sun; Time Worms Of Oberheit; Valdemar Incident.
Personnel: Sarp Keskiner: shakers, single string, yayboru, washtub bass, acoustic guitar, synths, fx,cans, toy xylophone, goat bells, plastic shakers, plastic chains, cans, gongs, apricot seed whistles, whistle, bottles, ocarina finger percussions, clay flutes; Volkan Terzio?lu: clarinet; Korhan Futac?: soprano saxophone; Deniz Cuylan: bass pad; Or?un Ba?türk: cans, cymbals, toy snares, sipsi reeds; Burkay D?nderici: tambura picks, loops.
... di Origine Oscura
Tracks: ... di Origine Oscura.
Personnel: Mauro Sambo: alto sax, percussion, double bass.
Signals from Heart
Tracks: Estrangement; In An Old Family Album; Otherwise, No One Says Anything; A Season in Hell; Recueillement.
Personnel: Giray Gürkal: guitar, fx, trumpet (3).
Wooden Plants—June '09
Tracks: Wooden Plants—June '09.
Personnel: Ilia Belorukov: alto saxophone, objects; Dmitriy Krotevich: trombone, objects; Andrey Popovskiy: acoustic guitar, objects.
Karma Trinley Drolma
Tracks: Dropping Cymbals (Symbols); Karma I; Karma II; Karma III; Karma IV; Karma V; Karma VI; Karma VII; Karma VIII; Dakini I; Dakini II; Dakini III; Dakini IV; Dakini V; Heart; Middle Eye; Tracing the Body.
Sabrina Siegel: cymbals, electric bass, and electric guitar played with rocks.
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Okay Temiz
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Aki Takase
Dom Minasi
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Jaco Pastorius
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Zeena Parkins
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