Altin Gün New Album & US Tour

Mon, Jul 22 - Sun, Aug 11  2019

_T_his summer, the Amsterdam-based Turkish psychedelics band Altin Gün (‘Golden Day’) will visit the US and Canada for a tour of their second album ‘Gece’ (available here) (scroll down for the tour schedule).

© Irina Raiu 

About Altin Gün

“In the universe, there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between, there are doors,” nineteenth-century poet and novelist William Blake once beautifully suggested. To discover new things you sometimes need someone to open a door between the known and the unknown. Altin Gün (‘Golden Day’) is the band holding that door handle. And when the door swings open you smell, feel and hear a mix of sounds you may have heard before separately but never in this brilliant new context that sounds totally new.

© Irina Raiu

On their debut album ‘On’ (Bongo Joe Records), the band shows what happens when you open doors between Turkish folk songs which were passed on from generation to generation on the one hand and a dirty blend of funk rhythms, wah-wah guitars and analogue organs on the other. The Amsterdammers who come from various backgrounds (Turkish but also Indonesian and Dutch) comfortably create their work in the adventurous no-man’s land that exists between these two worlds.

Older generations of Turkish musicians have also experimented with opening doors between previously unconnected sonic worlds. During the seventies, artists such as Baris Manço, Selda Bağcan and Erkin Koray practiced a way of songwriting and composing similar to Altin Gün’s.

Manço, Bağcan and Koray have all influenced Altin Gün, but their foremost inspiration is Neşet Ertaş, a Turkish folk musician whose musical legacy is invaluable. Comparisons are almost impossible to make but imagine someone with the same impact and status as Bob Dylan or George Gerschwin and you’re getting close. Many of the songs he wrote have become standards in Turkey, national treasures which are cherished up until the present day. Altin Gün retains the lyrical and thematic structure of Ertaş’s songs, though they often alter their time signatures and add fuzzy bass sounds, sweltering organ sounds and raw saz riffs. Ertaş wrote the majority of the songs on the album even if these are hardly recognizable after all the work Altin Gün have done on them.

Let Altin Gün open that door for you and get ready to indulge in their fresh and beautiful sound.

Altin Gün are:
Ben Rider (guitar)
Daniel Smienk (drums)
Jasper Verhulst (bass)
Merve Dasdemir (vocals)
Erdinc Yildiz Ecevit (saz, keys, vocals)
Gino Groenveld (percussion)

Tour Schedule

July 22 at The Sinclair, Cambridge

July 24 at Rough Trade, New York City

July 25 at Kung Fu Necktie, Philadelphia

July 26 at The Anchor, Kingston NY

July 27  at Rock & Roll Hotel, Washington

July 29 at Lincoln Hall, Chicago

July 30 at Turf Club, St. Paul

August 3 & 4 at Pickathon, Oregon

August 5 at The Crocodile, Seattle

August 8 at Teragram Ballroom, Los Angeles

August 9 – 11 at Outside Lands, San Fransisco