Café Türk

This LP is one of the most welcome releases of the year, and the story behind it is a heart-warming one for these bleak COVID times. Café Türk were an underground band in the truest sense of the word; an implausible Swiss-Turkish folk-funk- new wave outfit, that played for an exclusively Turkish Gastarbeiter (guest worker) audience in Germany and Switzerland between 1985 and 1990, only half understood by their working-class Turkish groupies. Seven years ago their debut album,Pizza Funghi, was found in an Istanbul record shop by Grup Ses, a Turkish crate digger and beat maker, who relayed it to Zel Zele records in London. Café Türk frontman, Metin Demiral was sleuthed out and persuaded to turn over his delicious trove of master tapes, reworked in this compilation of Café Türk tracks.

One of the standouts is ‘Yildizler’ (Stars), a Bowie-esque ode to the space age in which Demiral chants names like ‘ET’ and ‘ Spock.’ Amazinglythis song was one of the many that had been languishing, unpublished in Demiral’s basement archives until now. The psyched-out, reggae- flavoured ‘Outro’, which features traditional flute playing, surf guitar, jaw harp, an excerpt from an Ibrahim Tatlises song, vocal snippets in Turkish and Swiss German and loads of reverb is totally wigged. Replete with analogue synth lines, sax riffs, guitar solos blending funk, rap, rock and new wave with some rootsy stuff, all with a sense of humour and indomitable charm, the sound of Café Türk is warm and redolent of Germany in the 80s.