Grup Bunalim
Bunalim

Well, yes: there was a time when Istanbul was San Francisco, when new and hallucinatory sounds echoed on the shores of the Bosphorus, when Turkish hippies, high as kites, roamed half-naked up and down the streets resembling the Dead in the early days of Haight-Ashbury, when musicians in flamboyant "freak" outfits, Mothers-style from the early days, tried to put on record the unique sensations generated by listening to the "new things" coming from the West. Those "new things" were called psychedelia, Acid Rock, Psych-Blues, but they were definitions that back then - especially in a country completely new to Rock - made little sense, except for the critics; back then, the main focus was on expressing emotions, conveying impressions, grabbing a guitar and mistreating it with distortions, almost "handcrafted" sound tricks born of pure, uncontrolled, and uncontainable creative energy. Spontaneity: this is the key term to fully understand a context, that of early, pioneering Turkish Rock, of which little or nothing is known "over here"; we, accustomed to looking at England or the United States, unaware of the existence of realities capable of expressing high-level music without faithfully - and dispassionately - replicating already known and overused models.

We often forget the existence, in Turkey in the early Seventies and beyond, of a complex repertoire of genuinely "underground" bands capable of producing sounds still intriguing today, far from deserving to be underestimated or ignored. "Anatolian Rock" is the usual label, a label that says everything about the geographical origin of the new "electric" artists of Asia Minor, but says nothing about the stylistic coordinates in which personalities like Erkin Koray (how can we forget his historic "Elektronik Turkuler," cornerstone of that new music, the real "Sgt. Pepper" of Turkey) and Baris Manco moved, but also groups like the almost forgotten (yet excellent) Grup Bunalim, perhaps the epitome of the musical culture produced in Istanbul and its surroundings from contact with the contemporary international reality: the first ever to use strobe lights during concerts, to compose under the influence of LSD, to display on stage - as colorful as homegrown scenery - works by painters of the recent Turkish avant-garde, ideal visual counterparts of the band's harsh and unsettling music. Guided by the clever production of the experienced Cem Karaca, another legendary figure of that same varied underground, the group reached the publication of six 45-rpm records (the LP culture was not yet in vogue) before disbanding after only three years in 1972. At an experience now concluded, those twelve total tracks were put together in the collection I present here: a commercially styled operation, one might say, but nonetheless the only possible source to discover (and appreciate) the music of such a significant ensemble. 

A "power-trio" according to the formula consolidated by Experience, Cream, or Taste, if you know what I mean, led by guitarist Ayet Aydin (who is also the lead vocalist), tackling a solid and engaging repertoire approached with an "garage-punk" attitude ahead of its time; an executional enthusiasm and a brutal intensity reminiscent of Troggs, Blue Cheer, Stooges, and even something of the very early Black Sabbath with the preference for the use of fast and sharp riffs, and piercing lines drawn by the guitar in unison with the bass. The slower tracks remind us of Fish, Mad River, even something of the same Dead, in the extraordinary fusion of Arabian scalar modes and minor tones imported from Californian Rock (very significant from this point of view is the instrumental "Bunalim," with the addition of avant-garde keyboards reminiscent of some similar solutions of "Electric Music For The Mind And Body"; the impression is of dealing with a modern reinterpretation of medieval Arabian music). There is also a lot, I would add, of the free and experimental improvisation of "Arab-oriented" formations of German Kraut (Agitation Free, first and foremost). Listening to "Yeter Artik Kadin" I racked my brains, not having adequate sources, as to which song was revisited by the trio in the context of a melody that sounded very, too familiar: and the piece in question, I can state with relative certainty, is "Get Out Of My Life Woman," which some of you may remember in "Heavy" (Iron Butterfly's debut closely akin, in its atmosphere, to Grup Bunalim) and in "East-West" by the Butterfield Blues Band: listen to believe. It's curious to see how the three navigate the twelve bars with the confidence of seasoned veterans. Listen again to the alternation between Hard and acoustic moments in the opening "Basak Saclim," as well as the clear echoes of "Wild Thing" in "Tas Var Kopek Yok," a noisy ride dominated by the guitar (and the voice) of the leader.

Without going into too much detail, I invite you to note the name of this group (as well as the Mogollar, another Turkish band of those years that I recommend to fans of certain East-West contaminations). It is certainly worth it: even though the album in question is not a masterpiece, I feel I can assign it four stars without hesitation. Enjoy listening.