Mehmet Aslan is an iconoclast in the world of tastemakers, influencers, DJs and producers. Born to Turkish immigrant parents and raised in Basel, Switzerland, Aslan’s childhood and adolescence absorbing Turkish music would later take him down an esoteric sonic rabbit hole as a record collector. These sounds would inform Aslan’s own musical experiments, as he sampled his more unusual records and reimagined them as dance floor bangers.
After his residency at Basel’s Hinterhof Club and a few serendipitous encounters, Aslan’s edits were picked up by stores and labels, including Get Flavour Records and later, Glasgow’s Huntleys & Palmers, featuring on two editions of the latter’s celebrated Highlife Edits series. H&P invited Aslan to contribute his own music to the label, resulting in 2014’s breakthrough EP, Mechanical Turk, embracing an eclectic mix of post-punk disco and Afro-Futurism.
He now releases his stunning debut album, The Sun Is Parallel, in a heartfelt search for universality in a world and a time in which conflict and division can sometimes seem so powerful as to render old myths about ‘the power of music’ as naïve. Instead, this album is a masterful spanning of the music of Earth, embracing diverse styles, featuring thrilling performances from his live band drummer Alican Tezer and guitarist Daniel Pankau, and collaborations with Valentina Magaletti (Thurston Moore; Vanishing Twin) and Niño De Elche.
Aslan underscores his belief in human, creative connection with The Sun Is Parallel. Music, he shows us, is the universal language.
Driven by questions related to the fluidity of his own identity, as well as the unusual stretch of time the past years have provided to investigate oneself, The Sun Is Parallel draws inspiration from Sun Ra to hauntology, to acid funk, to Ennio Morricone, to flamenco, to poet James Baldwin, whose quote “What you’ve got to remember is that everyone you’re looking at is also you” informs this entire collection of tracks.
“In a way, the world is a huge musical composition, going on all the time, without a beginning, and presumably, without an ending”, considers Canadian composer and environmentalist R. Murray Schaefer on Private Soundscape. “We can improve it or we can destroy it… That’s all up to us.”
“Tangerine delves into flamenco inspiration for a searing mini-epic that unfurls like the peel of its namesake, before bottling the groove and virtuoso guitar for a near-instrumental accompaniment, ‘Tangerine Sun,’ the most subtle of acid lines nudging back toward the dancefloor,” says Aslan.
Listen to Tangerine Ft. Niño de Eiche:
Whether in the confines of the booth, keeping the most open-minded dancefloor on their toes or establishing his own contribution to the musical landscape, Aslan continues to draw disparate lines between genres, eras and sounds, building a labyrinth that’s all his own, yet all yours.
Listen to “Tangerine” via streaming here.
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