Hear ye, hear ye, lovers of budding alternative bands: this Thursday the twenty-second of May in the year of our lord 2014 you should all get your backsides over to Peyote for a beautiful double bill of local talent. The night opens with the dreamy soundcollages of, well, Soundcollage: sustained stretches of strings, synths and samples that make you sway and sigh, slowly slipping into a sweet, soft sleep. Until Kinesis wakes you up with its beautiful brutality, that is. From slow doom metal sounds to frenetic math riffing, they will get parts of your body moving that you had forgotten about, leaving you to decide if that’s a good thing. Either way, we decided to sit down and have a quick chat with Yiğitcan Akçelik and Arya Afshar of Kinesis.
So, gentlemen, let’s start with the hackneyedest of hackneyed questions: how did it all start?
Y: I met Aykut in high school, and for a while we just played a lot of heavy metal covers together. Then at some point we decided we wanted to do something different, something more innovative, so we started writing our own stuff. That’s about four years ago, now. I won’t bore you with the rest of those years, but basically late last year we started taking it all a bit more seriously and that’s how we got here.
Your music is quite a bit more complex than the average heavy metal indeed. How do you write these songs?
A: Well, each of us comes up with ideas and brings them to rehearsals. Then we jam on them for a while, see if it works, and if it doesn’t, we cut it out, so only the good ideas make it into songs. Five of those songs made it onto our EP Lavdanom early this year, and since then we’ve been working on new songs, to develop our setlist from an opening slot to a full concert.
How easily do you find concerts with this music? I can imagine most cosy talking cafés aren’t really waiting for this wall of noise…
A: Well, as you know, Istanbul has a thing for cover bands, so sometimes it’s frustrating, but recording and releasing something really seems to help. When we released our EP on Bandcamp, we got about 2000 listens in just a couple of weeks, so maybe we underestimated the city a bit, in terms of taste. Sorry, Istanbul! (laughs) But yeah, it’s still not easy to get shows in here. I mean you could just play once a month for your friends until they start hating you, but we want to keep doing this for a long time, so we’ll need to build up a fan base as well, and that’s hard work.
Did the endless strings of protests have an influence on your opportunities?
Y: Well, for about a year now, all people here talk about is politics, and there are very good reasons for that, but for musicians it also means that festivals and shows get canceled, and that’s very frustrating.
A: In a way, it actually makes things more interesting, if you ask me. If this place turns into a new Iran, where live shows are forbidden, then you’ll see interesting things happening: people will start to play house shows or illegal shows in deserted locations, the music will get rawer and more honest… I think whenever a government turns against music, the music just gets better.
Talking about interesting music, let’s end with a round of namedropping. Name three bands you would have liked to play in.
Y: Definitely Dillinger Escape Plan.
A: And Battles.
Y: And maybe Sleeping People. If anybody knows those.
All right, last question: any other Istanbul bands we should check out?
Y: Definitely check Hedonutopia, a shoegaze band, and Zen. They’re an older band with members of Baba Zula. Then there’s Fakap, they’re somewhere between Battles and Tortoise, it’s a really cool sound. And a personal favourite: Nekropsi. They’re quite hard to describe, but that’s what makes them great – bits of metal, bits of electro, some progressive rock and noise added in… You need to hear it, really.
A: I’d say definitely check Gevende. They sound a lot like early Mars Volta, which is about as big a compliment any band could get from me. And Pitohui. Oh, and Künt. They stopped playing, but they did something between trip-hop and math rock, with two great singers – a very fresh sound. And of course don’t forget to check my other band, Rubber Walrus. We’ll be playing next week and the week after, if there aren’t any new riots to stop us.
Ok, gentlemen, thanks for the suggestions, and by extension for this interview, and godspeed this Thursday!
