Bin Dilde

‘Flower Taxi’ in English, present their second album, which means ‘in a thousand languages.’ Singer Selin Dettwiler, of Turkish-Kurdish background has brought together three Swiss musicians on clarinet, accordion and bass, to set to music nine poems written by Turkish-speaking people living in Switzerland.

The band’s sound is similar to some modern klezmer groups such as Kroke or Brave Old World, due mainly to the combination of instrumentation and tonality – there being much historical common ground in these two seemingly different toneworlds. Accordion fills a huge harmonic space in the tracks on Bin Dilde with clarinet weaving a counterpoint around the vocals and bass underpinning and driving the rhythm. There is minimal processing on this recording and the quartet don’t really need much, being able to conjure an extremely dynamic texture by themselves.

Some highlights include the title-track: a drone-laden and spacious song with a plaintive air; and ‘Yürek Kiri’ with its catchy hook, epic builds and groovy bass solos. As usual with this kind of thing, speaking the language would help one to reach the optimum experience but, even without this, Bin Dilde is a joy to listen to.