Two clicks of the drumsticks and a machine-gun snare fill and Altın Gün are off, guitars blazing over a propulsive rhythm section like a car barrelling at high speed down a hazy desert highway. So begins the Amsterdam-based band’s fifth album, Așk. The song, “Badi Sabah Olmadan”, had previously served as the centerpiece of their last full-length, the Bandcamp-exclusive Âlem, one of two quite successful forays into electronic and disco-inspired sounds the band dropped in 2021, but while there it was a taut piece of electropop, built on synthesizers and drum machines, here their arrangement is refigured into an exhilarating full-band explosion; every instrument firing on all cylinders from beginning to end.
Așk marks Altın Gün’s return to a live band setup for the first time since 2019’s Gece, but what they deliver this time around is most definitely not a retread of their older material. Armed with a batch of classic Turkish folk songs and some perfectly punchy production, the premier purveyors of Anatolian psychedelic rock have never sounded more invigorated. Earworm hooks and riffs abound across these ten tracks – see the stomping signature riff of “Canım Oy” or just about the entirety of “Leylim Ley” – but it’s the kinetic interplay and fervent grooves the band conjures up in their arrangements that make this record their most thrilling release yet.
There’s “Çıt Çıt Çedene”, which kicks off with a hip-shaking bass and percussion line that’s met with a call-and-response between synth and guitar until a mid-song synth solo escalates the groove to an absolute fever pitch. Or “Su Siziyor”, which shows off the group’s knack for layering instrumentation as they take the song’s sinuous electric saz riff (the saz is a Turkish lute that has consistently formed a signature part of Altın Gün’s sound) and work in a mix of percussion, synth chords, and vocals around it to build and release tension. The album reaches a psychedelic highpoint with “Rakıya Su Katamam”, with intertwining saz and guitar and distorted bass spilling out a winding groove as the drums push ahead relentlessly. Singer and keyboardist Merve Daşdemir’s vocals on the chorus, aided by harmonies from Erdinç Ecevit, sound borderline menacing on the chorus, and as the synths start to come in the band drives into a ferocious jam that ranks as perhaps their finest recorded moment.
Altın Gün’s sonic vision, connecting traditional Anatolian folk music with the sounds of Western psychedelic rock, has never been more crystalline; more fully realized. To the Western ear, one can pick up shades of international contemporaries like King Gizzard or Kikagaku Moyo, along with classics like Pink Floyd (the atmosphere and instrumentation on “Güzelliğin On Para Etmez” distinctly call to mind both “Welcome to the Machine” and “Echoes”), but those are only familiar touchstones to grab on to. What the band accomplishes here, by and large, defies comparison. Even as they take on songs that, in their words, “have been covered so many times” they sound unmistakably like themselves. And with the production on this record, they’ve never sounded better.
The band recorded Așk to tape using vintage equipment, and that typical analog warmth most definitely comes through, but this is also a thoroughly modern-sounding album, crisp and dynamic across the board. It’s a record that demands to be listened to on headphones or a good set of speakers; every sound sits perfectly in the mix, drawing the ear to the subtle intricacies of their playing; like the staccato guitar lines that match the percussion to bolster the spacey synth breaks of “Dere Geliyor”, or the soft shaking bells that add an eerie touch to the chorus of the otherwise funky stomp of “Kalk Gidelim”.
They know that it’s best to keep an album like this concise. Every track clocks in at under five minutes, each sticky little melody is given its own chance to shine without overstaying its welcome, and jams and solos burst in and out like blasts from a flamethrower, over just as quickly as they arrive and leaving only ashes in their wake. Song after song Altın Gün sounds nearly supercharged, guided by an electrifying sense of purpose that never wavers, and infuses even the album’s weaker moments with immense listenability. With Așk this band makes good on all of the promises shown in their last releases; fusing together the threads that have defined their sound into a fully cohesive vision and one of the most consistently exciting psych-rock releases in recent years.
