Baba Zula

Derin Derin Baba Zula

Art... it's a way to keep sane in the dark times, to fight, to grasp at life. For Turkey's BaBa ZuLa, art is their existence. It's part of everything the Istanbul band does. As band founder andelectric saz player Osman Murat Ertel explains: "Art is our language. We're an art group" And on Derin Derin, their first studio album in five years, they create their art with beautiful eloquence and stinging passion. It takes wing and soars high. Turkish rhythms form the bedrock of BaBa ZuLa's sound, just as they were the foundation of the early Turkish psychedelia of the 1960s and '70s that has been a lifelong influence on Ertel. The psychedelic sound of BaBa ZuLa also feeds quite organically into dub. But it's dub in a new context, an experiment in music. Derin Derin is very much an album of today. It melds the past into the present and sends it flying into the future. Even the band photo on the cover sees the past flowing into the present.