![[Futuristika!]](https://futuristika.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/futuristika-scaled.png)
Few clichés are as exasperating as describing a work of art—especially a film or an album—as a “love letter” to a specific place. This phrase is frequently attached to works associated with major metropolitan cities, particularly when referring to the most romantically glamorized eras of those cities: Paris in the 1920s, Rome in the 1960s, New York in the 1970s, and increasingly, the early 1980s.
To be honest, the phrase is generally complimentary. But the problem with love letters is that unless written by someone like Anaïs Nin or Franz Kafka, they tend to interest only their intended recipients. And the problem with writing a love letter to a city is that to truly understand a place, one must feel more than mere affection for it.
In this sense, BaBa ZuLa’s latest album İstanbul Sokakları (The Streets of Istanbul) is not a love letter to Istanbul. It is too thoughtful and too broad to be described as such—and certainly too critical. It feels more like a conversation. İstanbul Sokakları lets the city express itself through numerous field recordings, beginning with the announcement of the Istanbul Express train that opens the record.
As usual, the long-standing band quickly sets in motion their fundamentally Anatolian sonic engine. The album features no fewer than three extended psych-drone odysseys, driven by melodic repetitions reminiscent of Indian ragas. The longest track, “Yok Haddi Yok Hesabı (No Limit No Calculation),” runs just over eleven minutes and overflows with the dark, hypnotic essence of Turkish psychedelia. The boat horn and the cries of seagulls that introduce the next track return the album to the titular streets; indeed, İstanbul Sokakları shifts between the real and the imaginary. This seamless transition makes İstanbul Sokakları perhaps best described as an auditory psychogeography of Istanbul—a record where objective observation and subjective feeling are inextricably intertwined in a unique musical experience.
And then, in a wonderfully tender coda, the album concludes with Ertel playing his saz over field recordings of birds in his garden. While the work is otherwise heavily focused on Istanbul’s public face, the final note of İstanbul Sokakları is deeply private and sentimental. In other words, to BaBa ZuLa, no matter how many facets Istanbul contains, it remains one thing: home. ✪