Art Fag with: Future Sounds from Eminönü

8-bit polka-dot, jungle pop, casual sex, oldschool tarabya, gabber for kids, generative components, self taken cleavage shots of hot skanky emo girls, happy hardcore halucinations, boring blowjobs and speed metal soundscapes

YES it is quite obvious … Art Fag is back in the DJ booth at Babylon. Accompanied by Stereo Total and Plastik Vis. (visuals)

TONIGHT (15 march 2007) 22:00 Babylon 15 YTL (or 10YTL as a student)

Places to go, Things to do

I’m in my last weeks now here in Istanbul (well last, i’m coming back for sure;) and just before I leave amongst other things there will be a few event’s I’ll be involved in. So get you’re agenda’s ready, and hop by if you like.

#1

First I’m proud to annouce that Difüzyon will rock Istanbul with another dörtyüzsaniye. This second edition comes after the -above expectations- successful first edition at SekSek. The first one was such a succes, that SekSek was to small to house the audience. So sadely we had to send people home. That chance won’t be so big this time cause we’ll be hosting dörtyüzsaniye numero 2 in Studio Live. The please is big enough to house, let’s say 1000 people. Check out there pics on the website it’s a great venue just off Istiklal. Keep checking the Difüzyon site for updates and also if you (still) don’t have a clue what this dörtyüzsaniye thing is.

#2

We’ll I think I don’t need to say much about this one. I’ll be screening it at my School, the Architecture Faculty of ITU a.k.a Taşkışla together with Sleep[less] Taşkışla, check their website for more info.

#3

We’ll this is the most scary one 1st of February, Art Fag (a.k.a me with mi compadre Caglar) we’ll play back2back @ Babylon, before and after Alec Empire (Atari Teenage Riot)
We’ll play some Dirty Electro, Minimal Italo Disco, 8-bit Polkadot and other weird shit from our digital archives.

So see you around, ciao!

Release the Gypsy

Being also a DJ I have to write something on music. One of the first things that ’suprised’ me more or less was hearing some song I recently discovered while I was still back in Holland. I am talking about some songs from the Bucovina Club series by German DJ Shantel, these Balkan beats on steroids with Gypsy horns was blasting out of the loudspeakers of one of the record shops on Istiklal (Ada Müzik if I remember correctly). I was suprised because in Holland I played this music and it’s totally new to the audience. But after a while I figured out gypsy music has quite a position here in music culture, and the Turks love it. As always the music of the Roma is influences by the region where they reside. Instruments change, their place within local culture is always different. The Roma where already in Constantinople since 1050 and have from there spread to the Balkans, eastern Europe and all the way to France and Spain influencing Jazz (Django Reinhardt) and Flamenco.

In Turkey, Gypsy music plays a prominent part in the nightlife, for instance the Fasıl music, gypsy music played with clarinet, darbuka and violin. Selim Sesler is a good introduction to this, he is always playing a few days a week in one of the bars (Tuesdays on the rooftop of Araf, Balo Sokak) around Beyoğlu. I had a chance to see him in Babylon recently.

Babylon, the pop-temple of İstanbul, is also at least once a year host to Shantel, he will be there again the 11th of November.

But Gypsy music is on the rise in mainstream culture. Basement Jaxx has released a compilation of Balkan and Gypsy tracks “Gypsy Beats and Balkan Bangers” (a bit of a Bucovina Club rip-off). And bands like Gogol Bordello from NYC are getting well known. I can name all the names on the Bucovina compilations 1 & 2 but that would be too obvious. Instead something else that could placed in this trend is Russendisko, a returning evening (and 2 compilation albums) at Kaffee Burger in Berlin: eine Tanzveranstaltung, die der osteuropäischen Musik zwischen Zigeuner-Punk, Balalaika-Rock’n’Roll und Klezmer-Ska gewidmet ist. roughly translated: An evening to dance on Eastern European music, from gypsy punk to Balaika Rock’n'Roll and Klezmer-Ska.