With their upcoming performance alongside The Young Shaven at Karga on Saturday 16 December, Farketmez reminds us that plenty of Istanbul’s most promising bands are a blend of local and international members trying to push the envelope in new directions. Drummer Carlos Valderrama and guitarist Cameron Dean have been making music together since early 2013, the roots of which would eventually go on to form Farketmez the following year with the addition of bassist Hasan Kunt Yılmaz and Selçuk Güllü on keyboard/saxophone. In the years that have followed, they’ve been actively touring Turkey and have just recently released their debut album Deeelicious on Balyoz Müzik. Reverse Afro is their first music video off the album, with their second, Intro of Death, soon to come. The album is available on Spotify.
We took some time to chat with Cameron and Carlos on the band’s origins and writing process, what it was like collaborating with Sofar Sounds, the city’s music scene, and what we can expect from them in 2018.
To start things off, could you introduce yourselves and tell us how you came to form Farketmez?
Cameron: Carlos and I first met each other about 5 years ago when we both arrived in Istanbul. I’ve been involved in lots of bands before in London and Australia and I was looking to find people to jam with and found out that he played drums. So, we started jamming together in a really informal way. After a while, we discovered a friend played keyboards, Selçuk, and then after trying a few different bass players we connected with another friend-of-a-friend, Hasan. So by about the end of 2014 we settled on the line up we have now.
Carlos: It started just as some fun, but then week by week we discovered that there was some potential and so we got more involved in creating something.
Could you tell us a bit about the inspiration for the name? Please mind that many of our readers might not know the meaning.
Carlos: Well, about the name, we spent the first year playing without one, then we realized we needed one, so we made this list of about a hundred names! In the end, we chose one which wasn’t even in the list… We had heard this expression from everyone’s mouth and liked how it sounds, and when we knew the meaning we liked that also. Whatever…
What is music writing like for you? Considering the diverse backgrounds of the people involved, how much of a factor does that play?
Cameron: For me the writing process is really different to other bands I’ve been in, in a good way. We try to spend a lot of time jamming, improvising and always record it. From there we listen back and pick out the parts we like and try to work on them. In the past I’ve always tried to write stuff outside of the studio and bring it in, but that didn’t really work so well with this group and actually a couple of the songs on the album have come from that process and sound a little different to the others and the current direction we’ve evolved into.
Carlos: I really like how we do it because all of us are participating in the creation process, plus we are getting a bit more experienced at jamming all together, so we kind of understand and react better to each other as we play.
You’ve performed with Sofar which is a project many of our readers are likely familiar with. How did that happen and what’s that process like?
Cameron: Well, we tend to leave a lot of the gig booking up to Hasan and so I think he just harassed the guys at Sofar for long enough until they finally gave us a gig. It was a really cool gig and we enjoyed it a lot. It was especially cool to be able to play in front of a group of total strangers instead of our friends and to get a nice reaction from them.
You’ve just released your debut album. Could you share a bit about the story behind it?
Carlos: For the four years that we have been playing we had some interesting material, we made some songs from that, but a big part of it was not finished. We kind of pushed ourselves to make something solid from that, and to make it more serious we tried to record them and make this album… Took more than we expected, but in the end we are happy with the product as a debut album.
Cameron: Yeah, I think we have been developing our sound, especially as Selçuk has begun to play more saxophone, and we have honed our writing process. So, we just wanted to get the songs out there and in a way start to move on. We recorded it over a few different sessions and it took us quite a long time to finish it. A lot of the songs are quite old now. We first thought about releasing a 4 or 5 song EP, but then we had enough songs for a full album, so thought why not put them all out. The album is called Deeelicious and comes from the title of the second track. As we don’t have lyrics, we try to make the song titles interesting.
How are you finding the local response? Where are you performing these days? Any favorite venues?
Cameron: We’ve played around at a few venues in Taksim and Kadıköy so far. To be honest, we have struggled a bit to get gigs and find venues. We’d certainly like to play more regularly and these days it seems like Kadıköy is a more happening place than Taksim. So far our favourite venue to play at is Peyote, I think.
Carlos: I also think its hard to reach the circuit, there is like an invisible barrier that we have to cross and get some gigs more often. One of the objectives that we have for the next year is to play in different local festivals, and also try to extend the concerts to international venues. I also like Karga too; there is a nice atmosphere at that venue.
How did you wind up working with Balyoz Muzik?
Cameron: Celal from Balyoz did our first recording for us a few years ago and we were rehearsing at his studio for a while. We became friends and despite our music being quite different to a lot of the other music he has released he offered to release the album on his label for us. It was a good way for us to get our album available to buy through D&R online and to publish our videos through NetD. So we are really happy that he has helped us out like that.
What’s coming up next for you guys?
Carlos: We want to promote Deeelicious by playing in different venues and get to more potential listeners. Meanwhile, we are also working for the next album and already have like five or six new songs that we should polish a bit more. We’ll record them and publish a new album… With this last album we found out that nowadays it makes more sense to print albums with less songs, so you can work faster, more economically, and you can better define the quality of every song.
Cameron: We want to release Deeelicious in the UK and hopefully Europe and play some shows there too, but there is not a definite timeline for that yet. We keep jamming and writing new tunes and are just basically trying to get a more cohesive sound overall with the next set of songs we release. A little more analog electronic, a little more jazzy and still rocking. Our next gig will be at Karga on the 16th December with The Young Shaven, which we are sure will be a great night.
Image courtesy of the band.
