İstikrarlı Hayal Hakikattir

Gaye Su Akyol delivered a superb set at this year's WOMAD that focused strongly on the new songs that populate İstikrarlı Hayal Hakikattir (which translates as ‘Consistent Fantasy is Reality’). At the core of her band is a trio of guitar, bass and drums backing her voice and electronics, but they are augmented by guest guitar, trumpet, sax, oud, violin and folk instruments including the cumbus and bağlama (lutes).

As a performer, singer, and songwriter there's no other artist like Akyol. She has a freshness of vision and a baroque sense of the extravagantly absurd: a sensibility you might expect from a new arrival to this planet, her outsider's gaze locking onto a world beset by dangerous powers, chaos and outcomes. The folkish airs and Middle Eastern strings are attired in strong, crunchy riffs, while the multi-layered songs feature inventive musical ideas, dystopian realities, the waking dreams of personalised politics and a desire for freedom. It's like an Istanbul-based iteration of The Fall sandblasted by Hawkwind by way of Link Wray, all drenched in echo, and all informed by her group's extensive travels through Turkey, Europe, the Middle and Far East. With a global palette and a personal sense of urgency, this is an album that grabs your attention and keeps it.