Gaye Su Akyol - İstikrarlı Hayal Hakikattir '2018

Tracks list

With the release of her first international album “Hologram
Ĭmparatorluğu” (2016), Gaye Su Akyol established herself as one of
Turkey’s most compelling young voices and most exhilarating sonic
explorers. Her work as a singer-songwriter, producer and audio/visual
conceptualist, simultaneously navigates the storied past, the hyper-connected
present and the unscripted future. 

Growing up in cosmopolitan Istanbul listening to Anatolian music icon Selda
BaÄŸcan and Kurt Cobain in equal measure, Akyol skipped right over the tired
Oriental/Occidental paradigmatic clichés. Gaye’s music was global in
concept and local in spirit and nuance right from the very beginning. 

Following the widespread critical acclaim for “Hologram
Ĭmparatorluğu” Gaye and her sublime band spent 18 months travelling
up and down Turkey, Europe and the Middle and Far East sharing with audiences a
vibrant mix of raki laced traditional balladry, futurist surf and post-punk
opposition. The new album, produced by her and guitarist Ali Güçlü
Şimşek, is arguably more immediate and visceral than the first two,
reflecting her and the band’s growing reputation as a powerful live act. 

“Istikrarlı Hayal Hakikattir,” which translates as
“Consistent Fantasy is Reality,” is a deeply poetic album; an album
of personalized politics, an album that digs into the heart our contentious,
inexplicable contemporary experience. Never blinking. Always dreaming. Never
giving in. Never giving up. 

Play that song, play the vinyl, Let the storm turn around. 
Istikrarlı Hayal Hakikattir (Consistent Fantasy Is Reality): An artist
statement 

“Consistent Fantasy is Reality” is the third album in my
discography. Just like the previous two it is a completely independent and
liberated album that embraces a “DIY” philosophy, and a
revolutionary album which no capitalist or top-down imposed obligations can
restrain or contaminate. 

Like my second album it is published by our own record company in Turkey and by
Glitterbeat worldwide. 

In terms of its philosophy, lyrics, music and motto, this album is the dream of
pure freedom, of showing the courage to be yourself, of looking at the culture I
was born into without alienation, a “dreaming practice” propounded
into a country and world that is increasingly turning inward and becoming a
conservatized prison. 

Musically the album combines influences from the Anatolian Pop/Anatolian Rock
genre that emerged in Turkey during the 60s and the 70s with Turkish classical
music scales and vocal aesthetics, and various subgenres of Rock, bringing
together strong ballads, Turkish folk tunes, the conventional guitar-bass-drums
trio and percussions, joined by violin, oud, cumbush, and - as new additions
that the previous albums did not have – baglama (Turkish native
instrument), electronic beats and wind instruments like saxophone and trumpet,
together making up a very rich instrumental palette. 

With this album I pursued new sounds in the deep waters of this geography, dug
up the manifestation of my experiences, all the music, the people, the pain, the
dreams and countries I have heard and was touched by, followed the footsteps of
a personal archeology and tried to add my lost territories to these. As in my
previous albums I wrote all the music and lyrics, except for one song. I was
involved in all stages of production, arrangement and recording as co-producer,
and in the visual language and graphics of the album as the art director.
Although I did not try to emphasize this aspect in regards to my previous
albums, I came to be fully convinced that the existence and power of women needs
to be specifically pointed out in a world that is becoming almost caricaturized
with masculine displays of power, where everyone except whoever is holding power
is deemed invisible. As a woman born and raised in Turkey, who makes her own
music, who created a playground outside the masculine system by founding her own
record company, who participates in every stage of this work from creation to
production in a masculine dominated geography and an ever conservatized world, I
think it is necessary to make these stories of “consistent dreaming”
visible and I hope to inspire other women and people who are producing and
claiming their own dreams. In this sense this is an extremely feminist,
revolutionary and idealist album. 

About the name and the content of the album; there are two important facts, the
first one being the physical reality: In a difficult country like Turkey,
bordering the Middle East, Europe and Russia, in an atmosphere that is
increasingly conservative and in a world that contributes to this darkness with
its own chaos and power struggles, I believe that we need to create a counter
reality in order to challenge organized evil and the horrible reality it
creates, and the strongest option here is “consistent dreaming”. 

And the other fact is a personal awakening: The materialist world view
attributes supreme meanings and values to the confirmable, accumulated world
that it calls “real,” while almost ignoring the enormous power,
amazing nature and value of dreams. My superpower as a child was dreaming
(almost like the other children) and although I nearly forgot it for a while, I
remembered my real power eventually. There is nothing as spectacular and
beautiful as a free mind… As soon as I realized that the only difference
between dreams and reality was “consistency” in my mind, the
universe became a better place. This is where this album is coming from. 

On the cover of the album, there is a “fantasy world” that promises
whatever you fantasize constantly becomes your reality. We designed a
non-existent creature in any culture” with a majestic, glittered body and
with a holy light on its head that symbolizes that the dreams of the individual
are one’s holy key to open the new chapters in life. 

On the back of the cover there is an ancient motif called “eli
belinde” from Anatolian culture. Eli belinde (Turkish for hands on hips)
is a motif of a hands-on-hips female figure. It is widely used on kilims. It is
a “matriarchal symbol” that symbolizes feminine power, wealth,
fertility, good fortune, happiness...etc. But in this case, the reasons to put
it on the back cover are the feminine power she carries and the polysemous
structure of the word “fertilization” which I take to mean
“the fertility of a free mind and fruitfulness of dreaming.” 

We are masses moving within a huge chaos. We are the disaster seeds of a
cultural collapse which infiltrates the human mind and inhibits dreams. In an
age when we are forced to forget dreaming, as societies we become weak signals
of the barren mind. We are descendants of unqualified herds that follow grunts.
We are the miserable, standardized, un-rebellious and unfounded robots of the
new world. 

What could be the one thing that could separate us from this herd, these masses,
these crises of ambition ground down by the things we memorize? 

This album is in search of the great crisis of existence, the assorted
peculiarities that you are subjected to when you refuse to get used to and are
alienated by things such as war, or death, a sudden separation forever from a
loved one, dreams for instance, the nature of species, what we look for in this
weird planet, what we are not able to find, what we call real and what we turn
down as dreams. 

Dreams keep you awake and it is time to wake up! 

Gaye Su Akyol, vocals, percussions, electronics
Ali Güçlü Şimşek, electric & acoustic guitar, back vocal
Görkem Karabudak, bass & acoustic guitar, keyboard, electronics, back vocal
Ediz Hafızoğlu, drums
İlhan Erşahin, saxophone
Barlas Tan Özemek, classical guitar (şahmeran)
Ahmet Ayzit, violin, oud, electro saz, cumbush
Ismail Darıcı, percussions
Oğuz Can Bilgin, trumpet 

Tracklist:
01. Gaye Su Akyol - İstikrarlı Hayal Hakikattir
02. Gaye Su Akyol - Bağrımızda Taş
03. Gaye Su Akyol - Laziko
04. Gaye Su Akyol - Gölgenle Bir Başıma
05. Gaye Su Akyol - Meftunum Sana
06. Gaye Su Akyol - Åžahmeran
07. Gaye Su Akyol - Bir Yaralı Kuştum
08. Gaye Su Akyol - HemÅŸerim Memleket Nire
09. Gaye Su Akyol - BoÅŸluk Ve Sonsuzluk
10. Gaye Su Akyol - Halimiz Ä°tten Beter

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