Gaye Su Akyol returns as the ‘Anatolian Dragon’ in Anadolu Ejderi — album review

Gaye Su Akyol’s new album is in some ways a return to her first international release in 2016. Hologram İmparatorluğu celebrated a modern, multicultural Istanbul, equally provocative to fundamentalists and to nationalists, but 2018’s İstikrarlı Hayal Hakikattir, its cover of 1970s singer Barış Manço notwithstanding, doubled down on grunge. On Anadolu Ejderi, her return from lockdown as the “Anatolian Dragon” of the title, traditional instruments are back, from the violin, oud and electric baglama to cümbüş and sazbüş, all played by Ahmet Ayzit.

The music is protean, shifting even within individual songs. The opening title track thrums with sour little minor-key guitar runs and lopsided drumming, but then slips for a few bars into something closer to disco. “Are we slaves or donkeys?” demands the singer, confrontationally. Hip-hop beats clomp in after the woozy baglama opening of “Biz Ne Zaman Düşman Olduk”. Low bass notes run underneath like malfunctioning machinery. “I wanna die but I can’t die.” The mood persists in “Bu Izdırabın Panzehiri”, Akyol’s slow rap setting out more personal pain with no antidote. “I love him, he loves someone else,” she drawls. “I’m an Olympic swimmer in a pool of razorblades.”

But there is a brighter, poppier bounce to “Vurgunum Ama Acelesi Yok”, electronic beats clicking away under massive synthesised drum sounds, with occasional flurries of oud and a chiming bell. “He’s a charmer, this moonfairy,” she trills, “sharp shirt, strong tea; everyone is crazy about him . . . ” before rejecting a role as a carer and healer. “Yaram Derin Derin Kanar” opens with acoustic guitar, like Nirvana unplugged, and builds to a grungy squall of power chords, before easing out with microtonal strings.

At the end, there is a synth-pop styled Neşet Ertaş cover; then on “Içinde Uyanıyoruz Hakikatin” Akyol asserts her kinship with Syd Barrett and Brian Jones even as the lyrics take a ride on an Anatolian time machine back to 1980 and the third of the coups d’état that have shaped modern Turkey. Dilan Balkay plays a ghostly trumpet lament, the last four decades swim and blur together and the singing falls abruptly to prose.

★★★★☆

‘Anadolu Ejderi’ is released by Glitterbeat