A Night in Istanbul

This two-CD compilation presents mixtures of traditional and contemporary Turkish sounds, most of them from the late 1990s and the first half of the 2000s (though a few of them are undated). A few Turkish artists based abroad are represented too, and there's also what's described in the liner notes as a track by Brooklyn Funk Essentials featuring "a premier New York funk collective and a respected Turkish jazz-folk group." As with numerous similarly structured world music compilations on the Union Square group of labels, what you like here (and how much you like) depends very much on how much you favor traditional sounds or modern electronic-influenced ones. The more traditional-oriented ones are emphasized on disc one, where the presence of the winding indigenous melodies and singers, and trilling instrumentation, is more prominent, though sometimes shaded with more contemporary instrumentation and beats. On this first disc, Fata Morgana's "Orientation" is a real high point, attaining a trance-like state with the layering of mysterious in-and-out pulsations. Some of the tracks are classical in nature with no trace of contemporary pop influence, such as Tahir Aydogdu & Timucin Cgevikoglu's ud improvisation and belly dancing numbers that originated several centuries back. Pre-1990s Turkish music is also sampled with Erkin Koray's 1976 recording "Fesuphanallah," described in the track notes as "a psychedelic rock classic," though in truth it doesn't sound psychedelic, at least not in the common Western sense of the term. Disc two groups together the more heavily modernized Turkish sounds, with the use of club beats, hip-hop, DJ-originated trip-hop, dancehall, house, techno, and even a collaboration between Baba Zula and reggae dub artist Mad Professor. If more adventurous in some senses, it's also the less satisfying part of the compilation, sometimes coming off as Western European or American club music with Turkish overlays, rather than the other way around. ~ Richie Unterberger|