Bu Bir Ruya

Album review

Like Tintins of the guitar world, the musicians of Dirtmusic change destination with every album. After heading for Mali to join the Touaregs from Tamikrest or the Bwa people such as Ben Zabo, we find the American Chris Eckman (The Walkabouts) and the Australian Hugo Race (former member of the Bad Seeds), plunged into an adventure in Anatolia. Four Turkish musicians join them: Murat Ertel from Baba Zula (voice, saz, baglama) who co-signs most of the tracks, the percussionist Ümit Adakale who maintains powerful beats and strong polyrhythms from start to finish, the singer Gaye Su Akyol who lends her pretty voice on Love is a Foreign Country and Görkem Şen, inventor of the yaybahar, who, on Outrage and Bu Bir Ruya, deploys his hybrid instrument between cello and percussion, resembling a Calder. 

The casting is completed with Brenna MacCrimmon, a Canadian singer with Turkish influences, whose performance strengthens the texture of Bi De Sen Soyle and Safety in Numbers. Throughout it all, our heroes, always on the move, navigate through a myriade of foreign, vibrant and misty countries. If it weren’t for the sharpened and precise sound, we could have thought we’d been plunged into a psychedelic thriller from the end of the sixties, where the camera shots are often surprising and the mirages not always what they seem. A cinematic, hallucinatory and joyful album. © BM