The DJ as Archive Explorer

Baris K's trippy edits of '70s Turkish pop

Here’s where we are right now: Dive into any region of the globe, preferably one with deep music history. Activate the trusty search engine,  and within minutes you can locate knowledgeable musicians, DJs and historians who’ve made it their mission to excavate – and celebrate and in some cases revitalize – cherished works from the region’s past. Both those that have enduring resonance and those that have been long forgotten.

This activity – the framing of old curios for new ears – has blossomed in recent years. It’s spread from familiar cradles of music, like Detroit or Dakar, to places like Istanbul, which had a thriving folk and rock culture in the 1970s that was rarely exported beyond Turkey’s borders. Perhaps you didn’t need to add the mystical-sounding (but very ‘70s) folk of Erkin Koray in original form to your favorites list; encounter the gently expanded edit from DJ Baris K, and you might think differently.

Baris K’s source material was first reissued by Nublu Records in 2011, on the compilation album Istanbul 70. Since then, he and others have used its tracks in live DJ sets, looping discreet moments of instrumental intensity to create a hypnotic foundation. (The four-on-the-floor stomp of “Yaz Gazeteci” is a good example of this.) Sometimes synthesizers or other instruments are added, along with effects on the vocals and other electronic sweetening; Baris K does, however, leave most of the vocal performances intact, stretching the instrumental sections between them.

These edits are not radical reworkings or marathon affairs; the Steppenwolf-like rock riff running throughout Cem Karaca’s “Nem Alacak Felek Benim” would grow tedious if it stretched to club length (it lasts just under five minutes). Still, all four double-sided singles have a simmering, irreverent, trippy energy. They’re worth hearing for their creative dexterity, and the way they gently expand and update enduring works of Turkish popular music for new generations.

And even as they affirm the great continuum of sound as it travels from a specific place and time into another place and time, these singles make you wonder about the activity going on in the present. Does the archive exploration in Istanbul and elsewhere simply signal newfound appreciation for recent history, an appetite for material that’s in danger of disappearing in the digital age? Or does it cover up current creative shortfalls? Have we reached a point where contemporary work from places like Istanbul seems, structurally anyway, almost generically global, built on the same grids used in Los Angeles, and thus less reflective of a specific heritage? Watch this space for further discussion.

Why yes, we have a fancy digital suggestion box. Share your favorite Underloved/Overlooked records here: echolocatormusic@gmail.com.

Please consider subscribing (it’s free!). And…..please spread the word! (This only works via word of mouth!)