Şatellites

Şatellites are a brilliant Tel Aviv Turkish-psych cover band – but they’re also much more than that. Some of their catchiest songs are originals, like the first track ‘Big Baglama’ an impossibly groovy number, with low slung, bağlama lines, augmented with some cosmic retro Roland synth work shooting off into the ether. The homage to Turkish psych extends beyond nods to Anatolian psych from the 70s, to modern-day Turkish purveyors of the genre like Baba Zula (see the last track ‘Cecom’, which gives a tip of the hat to that memorable Bosphorus jam session tying up Fatih Akın’s Istanbul music documentary Crossing the Bridge). While wallowing in Turkish retro sounds, Şatellites are also the products of a distinctly Tel Aviv milieu, picking up on the same local Oriental harmonies that inform acts like Boom Pam and Dudu Tassa.

The Altın Gün comparison is perhaps inevitable. Like Altın Gün, Şatellites also appear, on first glance, to be fronted by a female vocalist, and yet are in essence a rather faceless Oriental rock band, supplying terrifically catchy grooves, yet lacking the charismatic frontperson personality replete with over-the-top stage antics characteristic of a classic 70s Western-style rock band. “Here the narrative is more like: ‘I’ll tell you about my suffering so you can be sad with me, and only then, when we get close we can be really happy together’,” says bağlama player Itamar Klüger.